The Future Of Junk: Varoom Magazine

Paul Burgess, professor at the School of Arts and Media at the University of Brighton, UK recently published a feature piece on collage, entitled The Future of Junk, including an interview with me and a large collage work of mine, The End of The World (pictured here, lower right image, in a spread from the magazine).

Burgess, a collage artist himself, offers a history of the medium and a dozen or so of its contemporary producers spread out across the globe.

Varoom Magazine is compendium of contemporary illustration, culture and society based in London. From Varoom's about page:"Varoom tracks the very latest in the world of illustration, discovering the new styles, exploring the world of illustrators and the people who commission them, digging deep into the big social, political and cultural ideas expressed in current illustration. Showing the most exciting, provocative, moment-defining work, and revealing the creative and human stories behind it."  Thanks!

See the preview of the article from Varoom Magazine, from Illustrating The Future, here.

Les Affaires

'Les Affaires' is a stunning new limited edition print from Paris based American artist Matthew Rose. It is available exclusively from Keep Calm Gallery in London.

Like a mall from hell and high water, Matthew Rose takes on this vast subject with a surreal tour through the commercial center of his mind with Les Affaires. Expertly produced by Mariela Cadiz and Burning Boy Press in Paris, Les Affaires brings consumption and all its myriad expressions to a neat explosion.

Here, Freud (lower left corner) considers the expansive narratives from behind a silhouette of Popeye-as-Buddah. A family ponders a side of beef, a salesman dangles a naked blue girl in offering from his battery-as-desk (a housewife's head). A child's arms are weighed on a scale. One of a large pair of hands beholds a fashion plate – her own head morphed into a construction of pipes topped by a fan – while the other hand readies a pen for signing over something of value.

Indeed value is explored and remade as acts of gloating, comedy and narcissistic wonder and feeding. Matthew Rose's Les Affaires, a print based upon an enormous collage takes 'business as usual' to startling new heights and frighteningly new depths. "I live on a market street in Paris," says the artist. "This happens every day."

• Limited edition of 100
• Signed, numbered, titled and dated by the artist
• High quality giclee print
• 310gsm Hahnemuhle fine art etching paper
• 750mm by 700mm (29½ by 27½ inches)

Price: £150.00, Unframed.  See more images and order from Keep Calm Gallery.

If you are interested in the original collage on board, Les Affaires, 1.5 x 1.3 m, (2009), click here: Contact. 

SCARED BUT FRESH POSTER [FREE!]

Download the poster for Scared But Fresh

The file is a high resolution PDF. You can print it at home or your office.  Click here to download the free poster.

Strange Positioning Systems: Caterina Verde Project On Kickstarter

Artist Caterina Verde launches her global, live streaming performance project, Strange Positioning Systems. SPS is a play on GPS, and the essential concept is live high definition video streams from all over the world that express the global village aspects of our brave new world as seen – and performed – by artists in the project. Caterina Verde is the creator of the Wall for A Book About Death.

For the project to get underway, a Kickstarter page was created.  This enables Caterina Verde to achieve her goals and produce high quality streaming video. She is seeking $8500 to produce the project. Each artist participant in the SPS project offers a view of their work and a bit about the their own SPS concept from their place on the planet – Norway, New York, Paris, Vienna, etc.  (See my page here). Contributions of varying amounts are rewarded with artworks. For example, a $75 contribution to the SPS project will reward the donor with my hand-stenciled signed print of DUMB BUNNY.   See all the rewards here: SPS ART WORKS.

Caterina Verde explains: "Strange Positioning Systems (SPS) is a global real-time live streaming performance project. SPS is projecting performances from one space to another---on the street, in a space, on the mountain, etc.

"A play on GPS tracking technology, Strange Positioning Systems (SPS) looks at the aesthetic, cultural and psychological peculiarities of positioning the self and collective enterprises in a fluid, electronically - dislocated environment.

"We are looking for funding for high end live streaming capabilities as well as for furthering a global network for artists doing live action work and helping artists and curators financially realize the work by creating an action fund. We also want to further develop our website so that it is a live portal for the works for the events.

"Given that this time in history seems to be seminal in terms of the horribly strange positioning systems such as the oil in the gulf, the planetary uncertainties both geo-physical and geo-political, we feel that our global community project is even more imperative.

"SPS, Strange Positioning Systems is evolving as a “strange system” or temporary environment with feeds from various places in the world and led by a different artist(s) or presenter(s). One space overlaps another creating a ternary--triple-based architecture. Plunging into the mix a cross breed of formats, moments and actions inform and reflect the actual strange positioning systems that we must all bear in our culture(s).

"Our first presenter in the U.S for live streaming is the Outpost in Queens, NY.   The Outpost has received a small grant from the Annenberg Foundation for our first presentation but we need additional funding for high end streaming capabilities. We are collaborating with artists and organizations from around the world (Norway, France, Iran, Austria, multiple locations in the U.S. and more) and are looking to expand our network into more remote areas."

Currently the artist line up includes: ALEXANDER VISCIO; PASHA RADETZKI; ANDREA WOLLENSAK; HOPE SANDROW; MATTHEW ROSE; ELISE MARTENS; EBON FISHER; ZOHREH ESKANDARI.

Please consider contributing to this fascinating project, and if you can, place the Kickstarter widget for SPS on your blog or other web pages.

See: http://www.strangepositioningsystems.org

ART RE-SOURCE: INTERVIEW

Steve Gray and artist-entrepreneur and well-known bloger conducted this interview for his ART RE-SOURCE site in Australia.

Here is a small sample from the interview:

What is the most unexpected response you’ve received from a viewer of your work?
Early on my career, I showed a series of seven collage works combining Chinese-English flash cards at a friend’s apartment on Lafayette Street.  It was a large group show of sorts, and my friend Russell Steinert who was then working at Leo Castelli managed to co-opt a narrow wooden shelf, I believe from a Richard Serra installation.  The works, aligned on a wall, were simple word/image plays.  A card of a chicken and an an eye yielded : UNTITLED COCK EYE.  Well, that evening some intrepid art critic scribbled on the wall next to my works: "C’est pas l’art!" Ouch! It was curious that this was in French, and Russell said to me afterwards: "Congratulations, Matthew, you had the best response to any of the works all night." From then on, I knew what I was doing was correct in each and every way.

Have you had much connection post sale with purchasers of your works?
Yes, collectors come back again and again and want to see new works, revisit older pieces I’ve sold them and discuss how I’m working.  It’s extremely rewarding because a sale isn’t just a monetary connection but one that’s both intellectual and social.  I’m grateful for those collectors who really have something to say and to teach me about what my work and methods mean to them. It’s a true gift.

See the full interview here: ART RE-SOURCE.

BREATHLESS

BREATHLESS, collage on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2010.

HOW TO FALL IN LOVE FOREVER

HOW TO FALL IN LOVE FOREVER, collage on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. 2010.

Franticham's Assembling Box Number 5

I participated in Franticham's Assembling Box: Visual Poetry and Works influenced by Fluxus. REDFOXPRESS, Ireland.  The edition, limited to 40 box copies, debuts July 1, 2010. My work, below, is a hand-cut DUMB BUNNY print.

A5 box with contributions from 23 invited artists: Visual poetry, collages, prints, multiples and objects. The invitation-only project is limited to 40 copies, numbered 1/40 to 40/40.  

Contributions from: Antic-Ham, South Korea; Vittore Baroni, Italy; Lancillotto Bellini, Italy;  Carla Bertola, Italy Anna Boschi, Italy;  Bruno Chiarlone, Italy;  Fernando Delgado, Argentina; Picasso Gaglione, USA; Pierre Garnier, France; Klaus Groh, Germany; Ruud Janssen, Netherlands; Susanna Lakner, Germany; Serse Luigetti, Italy; Tim Mancusi, USA; Keiichi Nakamura, Japan; Litsa Spathi, Netherlands; Uwe Petruch, Germany; Mercedes Resch, Argentina;  Matthew Rose, France; Christine Tarantino, USA; Francis Van Maele, Ireland; Alberto Vitacchio, Italy; Sean Woodward, UK.

All works are signed, dated and numbered from 1 thru 40. The pieces vary from hand-made cards and objects to rubber-stamped pieces that touch upon the often rowdy, non-commercial activity that Fluxus was known for in the 1960s.  Franticham's assembling boxes now numbers five in the series and is rapidly becoming a global small publishing powerhouse under the imprint Red Fox Press. Creators Francis Van Maele and Antic-Ham travel all round the world to art and book fairs with their published limited edition works. They are currently in Tokyo with a certain number of previous editions, hand made silk screen prints as well as a selection of books.

Only 15 copies are available for sale: Price: 70 euro / 100 $ / 60 UK Pounds. Click to see all contributions and to purchase from Red Fox Press.

You can also visit Franticham's blog, with updates on all prints and activities, as well as a schedule of their globe-trotting agenda, here: Franticham's Blog.

Into The Night: Matthew Rose On Art Interviewed By Chris Wakefield

The other night (June 29) at 3:15 am Paris time, I spoke with radio host Chris Wakefield on KHND, an AM station in Harvey, North Dakota. 

We discussed Paris, collage art and artists, architecture, streets, food, butcher shops, hair cuts, the project A Book About Death, the new book, MASTERS: COLLAGE just out from Lark Books, my prescription for young artists: Make something every day, or just fix your car and why I like being an artist ("I like the hours).

Listen to the interview: Matthew Rose On Art, Interview By Chris Wakefield, KHND.