Converge Gallery is pleased to present Matthew Rose’s The Letters, a conceptually-based body of text works, images and objects that delve into the worlds of alphabets, letters, books, mixed messages and their meanings. The artist has mailed 333 text and collage works on paper and canvas as well as a number of terribly unusual objects over a course of several months from his Paris studio to the gallery specifically for this exhibition.
Recasting the throw-aways and detritus, the overheard and misspelled, the artist has fashioned a large expository drama that serves as fragmented window into our collective Zeitgeist. Sex, love, death, politics, aesthetics and the muddled semiotics of our age all find a place in this body of work and beckon the viewer to read, decipher and unravel. The pieces in The Letters resonate with an enigmatic poetic presence. The result is a significant body of work by an important American artist.
Matthew Rose lives and works in Paris, France. Known widely for his collage works and wall-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-floor installations, the artist graduated from Brown University (1981) with a degree in Semiotics/Linguistics. Over the years he has long pulled the weeds on words and meaning, pruning images with a willful imagination. Influenced by Americans Ray Johnson, Jasper Johns, Joseph Cornell and a handful of French surrealists, Rose works late hours ripping apart paper and bits of text to remake contemporary life into a specific, yet unbound book, what the artist calls his “theory of everything.”
In 2009 Rose curated A Book About Death, an unbound, limited edition book on the subject of death at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in NY . ABAD was a mail-art homage to two influential New Yorkers and friends, the late artist Ray Johnson and the late Fluxus art dealer Emily Harvey. Each artist participating contributed a page in the edition. While ABAD included work by many notable artists like Yoko Ono and Geoffrey Hendricks, the exhibition became a sort of conceptual collage attributable to Matthew Rose. MoMA NY and LACMA in LA acquired and archived complete sets of the “book.” The ABAD project continues via artist curates around the works – its 27th exhibition takes place this year in Australia.
The Letters is Matthew Rose’s second one-man exhibition with Converge Gallery, following last years After The Flood.
Leading up to the exhibition, Matthew Rose will be posting new pieces from the show daily on tumblr, and has asked people world-wide to write him love letters addressed to the gallery.
An opening reception will be held Friday, July 5, from 6 – 9 PM The artist will speak at the gallery on Saturday July 6 at 7 PM.