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Converge Gallery is pleased to present Matthew Rose’s small and intimate exhibition of sometimes erotic, sometimes obscene, indecent, titillating, arousing, risqué, adult works of art rife with bawdy double-entendres and soft-core innuendo. This is the Paris-based American artist’s third solo exhibition at Converge Gallery.

These 100 hand-cut and painted collage works on board and canvas skew towards the suggestive with splashes of surrealist and pop sensibilities. Along with additional pieces in sealed plastic arranged triple-x magazine-style in a private “American Peep Show” viewing booth, “Pressure Washing” provides a kind of lexica pornographica, a modest pictorial thesaurus of contemporary pleasure.

Curated by Converge Gallery director, John Yogodzinski, these works target “almost every manner of sexual adventure with a sophistication and deep sense of humor that takes no prisoners,” says Yogodzinski. “These works offer rewards that will leave viewers and collectors of art and erotica in stitches and possibly chains. Matthew Rose proves again he is one of our leading collage workers, taking the aesthetic of cut and paste, and pushing past the gates armed with fleshy poetry.”

Kristen Hill, Converge Gallery, assistant director, agrees: “No philistine, Rose produces x-rated koan-like gems with a knowing virtuosity,” she says. “He’s a two-fisted culture warrior outfitted with sharp scissors, hot glue and a quick pair of hands to rifle through the Zeitgeist.”

Matthew’s last exhibition at Converge (2013), The Letters, comprised 333 works each mailed to the gallery. Some pieces were missives, others fragments from various alphabets, faux books and his award-winning floor-to-ceiling lexicon the “SPECIAL K WORDS.”

“Pressure Washing…” will be on view at Converge Gallery March 6 through April 25, 2015, with an opening on Friday 6 March, beginning at 6 pm.

More about the artist:
Matthew Rose’s collages, text works, prints, drawings and altered books and objects are widely collected both privately and publicly throughout Europe and the US. Currently Matthew Rose’s “Self Improvement Alphabet,” a 26-piece collage installation, is on view at The Cornell Museum, Delray Beach, Florida. He also conceived and launched the global project A Book About Death. His works have been featured in Masters of Collage (Lark, 2009); Cutting Edges (Gestaten, 2010); Axis of Evil (Qualicatica 2004); and the artist is currently involved in producing two books : Weekend Plans (Burning Boy 2015) and As Is, (Burning Boy 2015) a collection of written and photographic essays about Rose’s 30 years making and exhibiting art.

About Converge Gallery

Converge Gallery was founded in 2011. The gallery, already internationally recognized for its ambitious program, has been extremely selective and focused on both emerging and notable mid-career artists with an increasingly more conceptual direction oriented to display the most challenging and innovative art.

What we are trying to do, without any pretense to define art, is to elevate the discussion about art, reality and perception. Converge Gallery’s goal is to sell the meaning and cultural context of an artwork along with the individual point of view of the artist that, encouraged to aim for a certain level of aesthetic value, clarity of content and vision is also required, as well as the ideal collector, to have an extensive knowledge about the intricate dynamics of contemporary art.

The greatest achievement for us would be to extend the boundaries of art beyond art itself and generate a dialectic exchange between artist and general public by interacting with the other disciplines with the objective to determine a wider understanding of what is happening here and now.

The gallery is located at 140 West Fourth Street, Williamsport, PA and gallery hours are Tuesday thru Saturday from 11:00 am – 6:00 pm.

For all press inquiries, photo requests and a PDF catalog/checklist of the exhibition, please contact John Yogodzinski, director, Converge Gallery : john@convergegallery.com. Web: www.convergegallery.com. Tel: 570.435.7080 Converge Gallery 140 West 4th Street, Williamsport, PA 17701, USA