KAY ROSEN
B. 1943
Kay Rosen’s investigation into the visual possibilities of language has been her primary focus since 1968 when she traded in the academic study of languages for what she describes as her endless study of language-based art. Through paintings, drawings, murals, prints, collages, and videos, Rosen has sought to generate new meaning from everyday words and phrases by substituting scale, color, materials, composition, graphic design, and typography for the printed page.
While political issues often form the bedrock of Rosen’s artwork, she insists that her work is driven not by politics, but by language, and she follows it to whatever place it takes her. Rosen considers language to be found material, placing her in the more passive role of a cognitive observer who enables language through minimal intervention. The writer Rhonda Lieberman described her as a revealer of language who “shows it doing things that are totally above, beyond, and/or below its function as a mode of communication.”
Rosen’s work has been described as sculpture, poetry, architecture, and performance. Roberta Smith once called her a “writer’s sculptor” and Eileen Myles called her the “poet of the art world.” In a 2014 piece for Art In America, Rosen weighed in: “The linguist in me wanted meaning to be carried by the structure of the words, not type style; the inner painter insisted that color convey meaning; the sculptor in me obsessed about the construction of letterforms through materials and process; and any poetic instincts strove for efficiency.”
Rosen’s work will be the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition, Kay Rosen: NOW AND THEN at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany in 2023. In 2021, Rosen was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC to create a special site-responsive installation for the Gallery’s East Building; her large-scale painting, entitled SORRY, was on view through March 2022. A two-venue mid-career survey entitled Kay Rosen: Li[f]eli[k]e, curated by Connie Butler and Terry R. Myers was exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Otis College of Art Design. Other solo exhibitions include presentations at the Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Contemporary Art Museum Houston and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria, in collaboration with Matt Keegan; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Art Institute of Chicago; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand; University Art Museum, University of California Santa Barbara; The Drawing Center, New York; MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Rosen was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 as well as in 1991 as part of Group Material’s “AIDS Timeline.”
Rosen has been the recipient of numerous awards, including: a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Grants, an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and the SJ Weiler Fund Award. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield Village, Ohio; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among many others.
Rosen’s large-scale wall paintings are on long-term or permanent view at Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Mabel Maning Branch of the Chicago Public Library; and on the facade of 750 Prospect Avenue East in Cleveland, Ohio, as part of Front International Triennial of Contemporary Art. Rosen’s work is the subject of Stephanie Cristello’s extended essay “The Gravity of Language” published in OSMOS Spring issue.
Rosen taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for twenty-four years. She was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas and lives in New York City and Gary, Indiana.