A PERFECT FRIEND : PRINTS FOR SALE

A Perfect Friend, a series of 1930s surrealist-inspired collage works I produced in 2003, then turned into large format (76 x 56 cm) prints on fine Arches paper (edition: 3, although only a single print was produced at the time), are available at Janet Miller's Soma Gallery.

There are approximately 30 prints remaining from the prints made at the University of Nebraska Omaha, under the guidance of master printer Garry Day.

Each print is packaged with a foam core back and plastic protection wrap, ready to frame. You can order them direct from Janet Miller; many of these prints are viewable on my main web site.

Price per print: $500.

These print works have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C.  A complete book of all A Perfect Friend prints should be out soon.

ART SALES: NEW WORKS (WHERE DOES IT ITCH?)

Recently launched, Art Works, offers a range of new works, older works, artist proofs, stamp sheets, and terribly unusual objects for sale.

New: More than 120 collage works on paper from the series Where Does It Itch?

Each piece is 125 € and includes postage anywhere in the world.

Visit the site, click here.

(Hanging) Toy Art : MUBE Brazil

My entry for this Toy Art project at MUBE in São Paulo, Brazil was not to play with it but to hang it, darn it. 

He looks like Felix the Cat and Felix is in a fix he can't get out of...today.

Background is my Flutterbys collage, 2010. The Exhibition opens in Feburary, 2010 and is curated by Angela Ferrara.

Chez Gisèle

Simone de Beauvoir, 1952. Photo by Gisèle Freund

Gisèle Freund (1912-2000), the famed German-born French photographer lived above me for many years in Paris.

Freund photographed James Joyce at Sylvia Beach's bookstore (now Shakespeare & Company), just after the publication of Ulysses, spending a day with the author. She subsequently photographed the Parisian surrealists and literary lights of the 1930s and early 1940s.  She fled France when the Nazis invaded and headed to South America, Central America and Mexico where she met the leading writers and artists of that time including Jorge Luis Borges, José Clement Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueros and Diego Rivera among many others.

Her life is told in the photographs she made, and she made thousands of them, essentially documenting 20th century modernism and its leading lights. 

When she passed away in Paris in March 2000, many of her objects were put out on the street, among them the name cards for the slides she shot.  Around the same time the door buzzer to our building was changed and I acquired the old one, reinserting some of the subjects Freund photographed Assemblage constructed out of the former door buzzer of my apartment house in Paris. Click on the work, Chez Gisèle to see who lives on the 5th floor.

This work (Chez Gisèle) is available for purchase.  Contact for info.

YOU → ME At Yep & Youp Gallery Paris

A certain number of my YOU–>ME silkscreen prints are now available at Yep & Youp Gallery, 57 Rue Daguerre 75014 Paris.  The edition is limited to 100 with about 20 artist proofs.

Yep & Youp Gallery is a small boutique catering to children with hand made toys and furnishings.  It's a great little place, just south of Montparnasse.

The print is available from Yep & Youp for 100 euros. Click on the images to enlarge.

Also available from Keep Calm Gallery.

Amelia's Magazine : Interview

Interview by Kat Phan Amelia's Magazine (UK) on Scared But Fresh, A Book About Death and Spelling With Scissors: Amelia's Magazine.

Excerpt: Matthew’s most recent project, Scared But Fresh, is a dislocated love story exploring the sense and non-sense, which I was lucky enough to catch at Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own. ...
 
How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist?
I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” on my own. 


READ MORE, CLICK HERE.

Paintings: Silkscreen Edition Text Works

Recently, my silkscreen edition Paintings, sold at auction. The series from 1999, is an edition of 13 with three artist proof sets. Ink on Paper. Sheet measuring 30" by 22 1/2".

The series is comprised of enlarged museum post card legends (captions) and include "works" by Rembrandt, Munch, Giotto, Morandi, Vermeer and other masters. 

These works stem from an ongoing interest in "word as image," and the texts in various languages intimate a range of meanings (images) to differing language speakers.  The "names" of these paintings, translated by someone, presumably in a large museum or indeed, in a post card (printing) facility, are rife with typographical errors, and grammatical mistakes. The translations themselves are quite a bit off, due, one can assume, to the "unofficial" nature of the translations and the business approach to pumping out product...for museum goers.

The pieces – silkscreen on fine art paper - also tell the story of a kind of image removal, as the original texts lifted from post card captions, enlarged several times on common photocopiers, then turned into a positive (black) film, then transferred to screen, and finally printed tell a story of how texts (and images) are subtly transformed through printing.

This series is permanently installed in the Boca Raton Museum of Fine Art, Boca Raton, Florida.

Click on the essay (right) by Chris Mooney to enlarge and read.

There are several sets still available.  (There is one framed set in Paris; the others are unframed). Price: 3500 euros (7 prints) unframed.

Contact me if you are interested in purchasing a set.

Flutterbys

Flutterbys, collage on board. 50 x 70 cm. 2010.

SCARED BUT FRESH LAST DAYS

Scared But Fresh runs through October 30 at The Orange Dot Gallery in London. More than 50 collage works on canvas, board and paper, plus terribly unusual objects and the series America, 12 works on paper that pretty much sum up the American story.

The gallery is open all day Saturday, October 30.  Address: 54 Tavistock Place, London.  Tube: Russell Square.

Some press links from the exhibition:

IDOL MAGAZINE.
JOTTA MAGAZINE.
LIVING PROOF MAGAZINE.
CURATED MAGAZINE.

Photos: Japanese art lovers take a seat under the YOU–>ME silkscreen print.  The print is available for £100, unframed.

Orange Dot Gallery : Bloomsbury Festival London

Scared But Fresh at The Orange Dot Gallery in London will participate in the Bloomsbury Festival (October 22 & 23, 2010).  I will be at the gallery during the weekend to give a talk about my work and other art mysteries, as well as sign copies of MASTERS: COLLAGE, the new book out from Lark Books (2010). 

In addition to more than 50 collage works on view, prints and terribly unusual objects will also be available, including Rubens Rounding Third (A3 sized stamp art sheet), and the new YOU–>ME silkscreen limited edition. 

The talk begins at 3 PM, Saturday, October 22. The Orange Dot Gallery, 54 Tavistock Place, London.  Tube: Russell Square.

Click here to view the Bloomsbury Festival Program.

Image: YOU–>ME, silkscreen; edition: 100. Price: £100. Click image to enlarge.

The Art Of Collage: Northern Kentucky University

Originating from the wildly successful publication MASTERS: COLLAGE, a monster book surveying contemporary collage works, the Northern Kentucky University art galleries, directed by David Knight, put on the exhibition, The Art of Collage (August - September 2010).

Featured are two series of mine, The Storm Warning collage works from 2005 and Twinkies, from 2004/05.

There are in each series, two distinct collage approaches.  In the Storm Warning group, above, a central figure is dominant with text via stencil and paint.  The Twinkies pair mimics the "all over" concept with tiny bits of 1950s/1960s cartoon figures dropped at random on a wet glue canvas surface, sanded down to a smooth surface and then bleached to remove a good part of the color.

I have made nearly 100 of these "all over" collage works, each one a time-consuming experiment in color and "readability." From a distance they seem like color squares or rectangles, while up close the bits of words in French, Italian, English and sometimes German, tell an entire story from a 1960s comic book. But the reading is tough going, as the words are cut and torn, and sanded down to their bones.

Click directly on the photos to enlarge and see the details.

These works are available.  For price inquiries, please send an email.

Scared But Fresh : Open During Frieze Art Fair

When the Frieze Art Fair opens on October 14, 2010 in London,  Scared But Fresh at The Orange Dot Gallery will be open as well.  International art collectors and lovers of all things surreal are welcome to the gallery.

The exhibition is Matthew Rose's first solo show in London. In Scared But Fresh, the artist takes his signature "Spelling With Scissors" to an English and international public in a kind of Love Story. The works on board, canvas, bottles, boxes as well as silkscreen and stencil works, are surreal and intriguing, touching upon sex, death, time and space.

"It's my theory of everything," says the artist. "A 21st century handbook." 

On view are more than 50 collage works, prints, and terribly unusual objects. Special to the exhibition are the limited edition You–> Me silkscreen print the artist produced this summer in Paris. In addition, Masters: Collage, a new book focused on acknowledged masters in the art of collage will also be available for purchase.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Click for Map For The Orange Dot Gallery: 54 Tavistock Place, London.  Tube : Russell Square.

The Orange Dot Gallery: 54 Tavistock Pl, Camden Town, Greater London WC1H 9, UK

Crane TV at Scared But Fresh in London

The film crew from http://crane.tv/ just after filming an interview with me at the Scared But Fresh exhibition in London.  Shekha, far left, led the interview. The film piece should go live the week of October 11, 2010.

Seeking Kali

LIP, a collage for the project Seeking Kali.

SCARED BUT FRESH VERNISSAGE/OPENING 5 OCT AT THE ORANGE DOT GALLERY LONDON

SCARED BUT FRESH: An Exhibition of Collages and Unusual Objects from Matthew Rose. 

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE PRIVATE VIEW OF ‘SCARED BUT FRESH’

THE ORANGE DOT WILL ALSO BE CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF AN ENTIRE NEW EXHIBITION SPACE - THE BASEMENT.

TUESDAY 5TH OCTOBER / 6PM– 9PM
RSVP ESSENTIAL: danielle@theorangedot.co.uk

SCARED BUT FRESH RUNS THROUGH OCTOBER 31.

THE ORANGE DOT & SCARED BUT FRESH WILL ALSO BE PART OF THE BLOOMSBURY FESTIVAL. DATES: Saturday 23 October, all day; Sunday 24 October, all day.

Along with the works on display and the exclusive prints, signed exhibition posters and copies of Masters: Collage will be available to purchase. 
 

The Orange Dot Gallery
54 Tavistock Place Bloomsbury 
London, WC1H 

FOR A PREVIEW OF WORKS AND DETAILS ON THE EXCLUSIVE PRINTS CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR THE EXHIBITION PLEASE VISIT THE GALLERY WEBSITE: http://www.orangedotgallery.co.uk

IMAGE: ABOVE, POSTER OF L'ORANGERIE.  RIGHT: JOSEPH CORNELL, BOTTLE COLLAGE, 2007.

DOWNLOAD & PRINT THE POSTER FREE (15MB, PDF).

Your Art Here: Spelling With Scissors

I've entered my full on, wall to wall to wall from ceiling to floor installation work Spelling With Scissors in the H&M contest, Your Art Here.  Take a look, vote (click on the stars), and survey the other artist proposals.  If you're an artist, submit your own entry.  It's free.

MATTHEW ROSE Spelling With Scissors: Your Art Here (Vote).

The End Of The World

THE END OF THE WORLD (REALLY BUILT TO LAST) is Paris-based artist  Matthew Rose's surreal fantasy about the fragility of world we  live in and the end of the world we've built.

"The end of the world is in fact a created fiction with a decidedly real dimension," says the artist. "It's a dream and yet it's one we live in, walk through, sleep off. I'm reminded of James Joyce's famous line: 'History is a nightmare I'm trying to awaken from.'"

Based on an original  collage from 2008, THE END OF THE WORLD, reports from the frontiers of  the real and dream worlds, where foods and animals, naughty little boys  and errant little girls enter into the visual field and run, jump, hang  and float in and around an assortment of human narratives that are  veering dangerously out of control.

This work, and others in the  series, appears in Masters: Collage (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, USA May  2010). The print is available exclusively from Keep Calm Gallery London.  There are only 45 prints remaining in the edition of 85. Price: £38.00. (Note: The new shipment to Keep Calm is arriving the week of September 20, so be assured there are prints to purchase).

[Click images to enlarge and see detail.]

• Limited edition of 85
• Signed, dated & numbered by the artist
• Giclee print on Hahnemuhle paper
• 290mm by 290mm (11½ by 11½ inches)

The original collage measures 50 x 50 cm, and is available.  Contact Matthew Rose for information.

The remaining 45 prints in the edition were expertly produced by Mariela Cadiz working with Burning Boy Press.  Mariela, based in Paris, produced fine art, grand format ink jet prints for photographers and artists of the highest quality.

MASTERS: COLLAGE Book Signing At The Orange Dot Gallery London October 6, 2010

MASTERS: COLLAGE – As part of Orange Dot Gallery's exhibition Scared But Fresh with Matthew Rose opening October 6, a limited number of copies of the recently published Masters: Collage will be available to buy from the gallery. Each copy, signed and dated by the artist, will be available for £17.99.

Edited by Randel Plowman, this gorgeously produced volume of contemporary collage artists appeals to beginners, professionals, collectors and general enthusiasts.  The book showcases a breathtaking mix of techniques and styles from 40 of the leading collage artists currently working across the globe.
 
Along with Matthew Rose,  artists include: Cecil Touchon, Jonathan Talbot, Lynne Perrella, Lynn Whipple, Robert Mars, Janet Jones, Liz Cohen, Robert Hunt, Baby Smith and James Michael Starr among others.

Looking at techniques from traditional cut-and-paste to digital to collage with paint or encaustic, and styles ranging from wildly playful and colourful to evocative, almost monochrome images Masters: Collage examines a wide range of disciplines within collage. Each highlighted master takes centre stage in an informative eight-page feature that includes nearly a dozen gorgeous, high-quality photos plus a short essay by curator Randel Plowman placing the impressive work and its creator in context.

Versatility, innovation, inspiration – that’s what the Masters series offers artists and crafters and this superb new collection offers a stunning look at contemporary collage work from over 40 leading artists. An exhibition of works from the Masters book, Lost and Found: The Art of Collage, was recently launched at Northern Kentucky University. Matthew Rose will sign copies of the book during the opening of Scared But Fresh October 6, 2010.

[Image above: Cover, Masters Collage; above, right: Matthew Rose, "My Situation," 2008, collage on board, 43 x 21 cm]

SCARED BUT FRESH : LE LOOK

Silvia Marsano of the Fondazione Volume! in Rome, sports the SCARED BUT FRESH bracelet, a small item I created for the exhibition in London.

Silvia was nice enough to model the bracelet on a beautiful day in Rome in September.

"I like this name," she said.  "It's true. Scared but fresh...of course."

Black on white, the cotton ruban tissé ties nicely around the wrist and should be worn until it falls off. Which could be never.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Only 250 of these very fashionable pieces were produced; they measure 30 cm long. The bracelets will be given away at the opening, so do come and tie one on. Info: Orange Dot Gallery London October 6 2010.

Second Hand Clock

Second Hand Clock, a working machine with only a tick tocking second hand. It echos various Fluxus time pieces, and always gives the right time. (You'll have to supply the right place). SHC is a philosophical, poetic object, a haiku Martin Heidegger might enjoy.

This piece, along with other unusual objects, will be part of Scared But Fresh at The Orange Dot Gallery, London.  Opening October 6, 2010.

Second Hand Clock, 2008. 21 cm in diameter.  Altered object, painted. One AA battery.

Smoking

Smoking, collage on magnum bottle, 2010.

This piece and other bottleworks (Flaschenwerken) will be on view at Scared But Fresh, Orange Dot Gallery London, opening October 6, 2010.

Questions: Contact.

Orange Dot Gallery London: Scared But Fresh

Scared But Fresh, the exhibition at Orange Dot Gallery in London, opens October 6 2010. If you would like to see the event on FaceBook, and join, click here.

The poster for the exhibition is available free for download in a high resolution PDF.  Download the poster.

KEYMAT Collage Studio Works

In August 2010, Keith Donovan and I collaborated on some three dozen collage pieces during a massive thunder and lightening storm that swept the French countryside some three hours south of Paris. We worked throughout the day and into the night, producing this series using a variety of tampons, collage, paint and chance.

Collaborative work is a fascinating and often difficult process.  During the production of these pieces, Keith related the collaborative story of artists Dieter Roth and Richard Hamilton in 1976. An exhibition of the works opened at Galeria Cadaqués.  Each picture was accompanied by a drawn or painted certificate as well as a small image of sausages – meant for the dogs.  Their efforts were dubbed the Rotham Certificates.


I've collaborated with a number of artists in the past including John Himmelfarb, a Chicago-based artist, and the visual poet, John Bennett, the director of Special Collections, Ohio State University. 

The process of handing over an image to another artist sharpens – or dissolves – the ego.  A little section of a piece one grows attached to is sent into the forge to be changed, printed over, obliterated or changed for the benefit of the whole. Sure, there were arguments.

The works, which were helped along by a hungry cat named Vermine, each roughly 25 x 17 cm in size, with a series of five works at 50 x 34 cm.  Pictured here, above are Hard and below, a view of the studio in Le Johet, France. Click on the images to enlarge.

You ––> Me : Silkscreen Print

You ––> Me : Silkscreen print, after collage, 47.5 x 38 cm, three colors, on Arches Rives, 300 gram paper. Edition: 100. All signed and numbered.  20 artist proofs were also produced on a variety of fine art papers, along with several prints on fine art papers in gold, silver, and pink.

The print is a little piece of visual poetry, a sort of lexical love song, a Valentine.

The print was published by Burning Boy Press. Burning Boy Press produces mostly high-quality digital prints in Paris.

The original collage, measures 47.5 x 38 cm, dates from 1999.  Exhibited in Berlin at Galerie Tristesse (2006) and in Paris at Bernard Matussière (2009), the original is available for purchase. [Contact for price].

You ––> Me, 2010, was printed at Michel Hosszù's atelier in Paris in a single day.  Photograph of Michel Hosszù (below) taken in front of his massive silkscreen piece "Grimaces" in his studio in the Bastille section of Paris.

Michel Hosszù designed the screens for printing using three separate colors – two shades of gray and one final black.  Together we moved through the edition, racking up the pieces (photo, right), finally playing with the registration for some of the proofs and off-edition works at the end of the day.  The gold, silver and pink pieces were spray painted prior to printing. Two pieces – one gold, one silver – were printed on A3-sized canvases.

Of note: As a boy I was often working with my father in Queens, New York, producing silkscreens for his retail clients.  The screens – some as large as four meters wide and with as many as 28 colors – were beautiful in themselves.  The variety of paints and lacquers and the teamwork needed to pull the giant squeegee across such a giant screens remain potent images in my mind about the process of reproducing images. There is a gorgeous (although somewhat toxic) perfume involved in silkscreening.

As a teenager, I held many jobs in the silkscreen shop, from stretching the dylon fabric over the frames to spreading out the emulsion, position the frame for printing, then blotting out the tiny holes left after the UV printing lamp hit the acetate positive with the image.  Back then the image silhouettes were often cut out of ruby lith, and not punched out of a laser printer via Photoshop file.  It's a process that combines photography, handiwork, low end technology, but with spectacular results.  Sadly, a great deal of silkscreen production has been taken over by digital printing; and while both are wonderful, there is nothing like the creation of a silkscreen print. It's beautiful and delightfully messy.

The YOU --> ME prints are available through Keep Calm Gallery while a few will also be available at my exhibition SCARED BUT FRESH at Orange Dot Gallery in London on October 6, 2010.  

To purchase a YOU --> ME print, please contact Keep Calm Gallery, by clicking here.

3 PAILS

3 Pails, sculpture.  Boxes, painted white, with three tin pails suspended with twin, 1999-2000.  50 x 39 x 18 cm each.

To purchase, contact me.

PHOTO: RICK ERICKSON.

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.