Artwork Description
Braille Eye Chart
Dimensions: 49 x 32 x 2.75″
Year: 2010
Media: MDF, wood, epoxy
Walter Robinson’s Braille Eye Chart is one of his most remarkable works of cryptic genius. Robinson explores the irony of an “eye chart” for people who experience written language through the sense of touch, rather than via the sense of sight. He sets up this tactile eye chart in the same pyramid shape as the traditional eye chart one would encounter at a seeing person’s eye test.
Robinson draws the sight-enabled viewer into the work with his shiny green and black palette. For his seeing audience, the tactile sumptuousness and stylized design of this work is enough to compel the viewer. The braille stands in for language as a secret code, known to have meaning, yet not understood, by those we see but do not read braille.
Just as viewers with sight are rewarded with an rich abstract visual experience of the Braille Eye Chart, Robinson provides an equally exceptional experience of this work of art for his non-seeing audience. He successfully creates a tactile art experience for them; one that only they can understand. Robinson hides a confounding message about participating in language visually versus viscerally. His braille eye chart reads:
I 1
DO 2
SEE 3
THAT 4
WORDS 5
EMBODY 6
BLINDLY 7
VISCERAL 8
KNOWLEDGE 9