Kay Rosen
(NO) COMMENT

With (NO) COMMENT, American artist Kay Rosen (*1947) presents her first solo-show at Klosterfelde
Berlin. Next to the wall painting BLURRED, a selection of alphabetically ordered small-format works on
canvas are on display. Since the late sixties, language in its written form has become Kay Rosen’s art-
istic material, in the seventies, performance and text/photographic works were added, since 1982, how-
ever, she works solely with text.

She paints short sentences, often just single words, with acrylic or enamel paint on canvas or wall sur-
faces, with the usage of typography, colour, spacing, punctuation and direction of reading decisively in-
fluencing their meaning in the process. The recipient is asked to actively decode the compact plays on
words, which interact on both visual and lexical levels.

The symmetrically arranged, monumental wall-painting BLURRED consists of three blue and three red
letters (BLU and RED, respectively), as well as a purple single letter ‘R’, painted in one of the corners of
the room. With this ambivalent linguistic figure, the work also implies the divisive situation between Re-
publicans and Democrats as represented in the American media, e.g. on election maps, with the colours
red and blue. Both verbally and visually the two opposing positions are connected through the ‘mediating’
letter ‘R’, at the same time making apparent the necessary compromise in terms of diplomacy.
The work PENDULUM, for which there is a blueprint drawing, has a similarly political background: The
seemingly arbitrary row of letters, PNUUMLDE discloses itself to the beholder only if he reads the letters
pendulum-like in the sequence 1-8-2-7-3-6-4-5. Eye movement, in conjunction with the centripetally de-
creasing size of the lettering lets the word pendulum appear. This right-left-right alternating movement
encapsulates an allusion to the Bush-Clinton- Bush change of administration. Political references are not
central however, and are often being evoked only through a certain context of the viewer. The content con-
veyed can be applied onto any two opposing positions.
Many of Rosen’s works evolve out of trouvailles, found notions, like I Wish I Knew My Neighbour Better,
consisting of two almost identical pictures beside each other: Ivory L. Brown, the name of an unknown
neighbour, was fascinating to the artist on the basis of both the colours (ivory & brown) in first- and
second name,- lime or lilac are chosen to fill the symbol ‘L’ in its centre, because her middle name
re mained unknown. The clear colouring (she solely uses tones from existing industrial colour charts)
and appellative typography of her linguistic images is often reminiscent of painted slogans or signs.
In WISH DISH, for instance, derived from yellowish and reddish, the beginning of both words is re-
placed through the colour in the painted letter and thus a part of the signified through a visual signifier.
The (full) scope of the little interventions that Rosen performs on language-units with humour and virtu-
oso lightness unfolds only with a repeated look at the pictures. The consensus between sender and
recipient experiences a minor distortion that in turn becomes the basis for a heightened perception.

For images or further information please contact the gallery.

opening: 11. November 2005, 6 – 9 pm
duration of the exhibition: 12. November – 23. December 2005
opening hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays 11 – 6 pm and by appointment