Ebner verwendet Fotografie um gefundene Objekte in Bilder mit Zeichencharakter zu übertragen. Der fotografische Blick hält das "Word-as-object" fest wie eine Seite Papier ein gedrucktes Zeichen. Die Buchstaben werden zu lesbaren Wörtern angeordnet, sie warden in einem bestimmten Zusammenhang abgebildet, der weitere Bedeutungen produziert.
Hollywood-Zeichen, Billboards oder "Duck" Architektur – Eugène Atgets und Brassaïs Fotografie – Bruce Naumans Neonschriften, Ed Ruschas Malerei mit Schrift und Robert Smithsons "Mirror Displacement" (Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”)
"Ebner’s work offers a broad critique of the ideologically charged language of freedom, democracy, and war that has dominated public discourse since 9/11."
Text on Ebner by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2013
"Der allein stehende Buchstabe ist unschuldig: Die Schuld, die Vergehen beginnen, sobald man Buchstaben aneinanderreiht, um Wörter aus ihnen zu machen."
Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Form: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, Hill and Wang, New York 1985, S. 119. Zitiert aus: Vanessa Joan Müller, "Shannon Ebner: Non-Verbal Residuals", Camera Austria International Nr 118, 2012
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| RAW WAR, 2004, part of "Dead Democracy Letters" Series, chromogenic print, 20 1/2 × 23 9/16 inches |
ephemeral sculptures of sizable cardboard letters, placed in lonely, vast landscapes, photographed, and then abandoned to time’s evisceration.
"Sculptures Involuntaires", 2007
C-print, 49 1/16 × 62 5/8 inches. It shows the box housing the letters used for earlier works of the “Dead Democracy Letters” series
"Democratizing", 2007
"Between Words Pause", 2009
"and per se and", 2011
"The Electric Comma", 2011, fortlaufend
"The Electric Comma" plus essay by Anne Ellegood at Hammer Projects, Los Angeles, July–October 2011
"an on-going project … which began as a poem she wrote of the same name about various conditions of the photographic, such as its alleged static nature and its vocation of describing events of the past. The poem, or as Ebner refers to it, “the photographic sentence,” seeks to enliven the image by subjecting it to various challenges that ask the photograph to perform outside its usual function of reporting or depicting events, people, places, and things of our time. "
"A Hudson Yard", 2016, The Highline Art Project, New York
"A Pattern to the Letter" at Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens, April—July 2017
"A Pattern to the Letter" at Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens, April—July 2017
