Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN
The Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of Kay Rosen in Europe. Ever since the 1970s, the American artist (*1943 in Corpus Christi, Texas; lives in New York City and Gary, Indiana) has been using language as artistic material. She is internationally known above all for wall works which render individual words, sentences or series of letters, often in massive dimensions. Coming together here in an impressive manner are minimalist form, aesthetic impact and intelligent contents.
Whether climate crisis, AIDS, gender issues or the relationship between power, self-empowerment and powerlessness—her works are permeated by political themes and reflect with pointed expressivity on current debates. Kay Rosen, however, emphasizes that she is not motivated by politics but by language itself. She seeks constantly new interconnections between image, word and script. For this purpose, she uses multifaceted visual and typographical strategies that extend a bridge between the disciplines of the visual arts, literature and poetry. In this endeavor, she takes delight in breaking rules. Thus she creates plays on words and linguistic images that not infrequently employ levity and wittiness for seductive effect and only gradually reveal their ambiguity.
For example, the word “Kiss” changes with only a few interventions into a “Kiss of Death.” Or a wall-filling list of historical potentates and popes ends perturbingly with the name of the American civil rights activist Malcolm X. From this perspective, Kay Rosen plays an exemplary role, because her works and “words don’t scream for change, rather they quietly enact change, leading by example” (Kenneth Goldsmith).
The exhibition in Bremen brings together around 40 works, including several large-format wall works, paintings, drawings, prints and videos. To be seen in addition to exemplary major works is also a new, six-part language picture that was especially developed for the spaces of the museum.
“The Weserburg is making possible, in recognition of the artist’s eightieth birthday, a fresh encounter with and rediscovery of a complex artistic oeuvre which, in its incomparable combination of humorous lightness and analytical sharpness, is now receiving its first comprehensive presentation in Europe.” Ingo Clauß, curator
Opening: November 17, 2023, 7 pm
Admission free
Exhibition on level 3
Curated by Ingo Clauß
Guided tours
Our trained staff will guide you through the exhibition, on request also on special topics, in German and English.
1. Highlights of the Exhibition
85 Euro plus admission
Maximum 25 persons per guided tour (50 minutes)
Registration is required!
2. Shooters Tour
Ideal for groups and birthdays, with the club, the company or just with friends. The Shooters Tour starts in an exhibition of your choice! After an entertaining guided tour you will go to our Shooter’s Bar, where you will learn exciting stories about the bar while having a cocktail and have enough time to talk together. The bar, a former movie set, was an important venue within the U.S. television series Melrose Place, which was extremely popular in the 1990s. The work of Mel Chin & GALA Committee includes the design of the bar as well as the bottles displayed on the shelves behind it and numerous other props.
85 Euro plus 15 Euro/p.p. (entrance fee and cocktail)
5 to max. 20 persons (guided tour 40 minutes / total 90 minutes)
Registration is required!
Information and booking inquiries
Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst
Teerhof 20, 28199 Bremen
Germany
Office hours:
Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
+49 (0)421 59839-0
info@weserburg.de
Catalog
A catalog has been published to accompany the exhibition.
Publishing house: DCV – Dr. Cantz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft
Editors: Ingo Clauß, Janneke de Vries
Authors: Ingo Clauß, Kenneth Goldsmith, Kay Rosen, Janneke de Vries
Design: studio lindhorst-emme+hinrichs
Hardcover, 20,5 x 25,5 cm
124 pages with numerous illustrations
German/English
Price: 35 euros
ISBN 978-3-96912-155-9
Available in the museum store or online here.
Events
Sunday, November 19, 2023, 2 – 5 p.m.
Offer included in museum admission. Without registration.
Typographic adventures. Hands-on station in the exhibition Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN
With the artist Sirma Kekeç
Get to know Kay Rosen’s world of word games, word (re)creations and text puzzles with curiosity and joy and use them imaginatively without a pen. The hands-on station invites you to create your own works on paper and take them home with you.
Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 6 pm
Admission 5 euros. Without registration.
Textbody: On Kay Rosen’s language combinations
Lecture by Elena Zanichelli
Based on examples from Kay Rosen’s corpus of works since the 1980s, the lecture examines the artistic engagement with text and characters in contemporary art – both inside and outside museum spaces.
By playfully operating with the common structures of linguistic combinations, Rosen often sets in motion a dynamic between wording and text signs that interrupts conventional attributions or even reduces them to absurdity. At the same time, her language combinations and interventions can transfer political content from the US context, such as the culture wars of the 1980s, into art. Transferred to the museum or urban space, the textual content becomes a political context.
from November 24, 2023
This Means War…
Poster campaign in the city of Bremen
To coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, large-scale posters can be seen at 10 different locations in Bremen. Kay Rosen is using the typographic means of her art to make a widely visible statement: The threat posed by the climate crisis as a special challenge for today’s generation!
Dienstag, 16. Januar 2024, 20 Uhr im Kommunalkino CITY 46
Ort: Birkenstr. 1, 28195 Bremen, Tickets: 9/5,50 Euro
film:art 99: Wort_Laut – in other words
A program of experimental films and videos, curated and introduced by Christine Rüffert (University of Bremen)
Words form the bracket of this extremely diverse program, be it as spoken word poetry, asynchronous subtitles, demonstrative text panels or associative word games. Highly comical, deeply political, satirically denouncing, caricaturally distorted, the films and videos touch on topics such as the delivery madness of our consumer society, the Dutch Queen’s speech from the throne, the (non-)coexistence of black and white, sexual confessions of a former US president, Walter Benjamin’s media-theoretical thoughts, toxic masculinity in Berlin club life and much more. Everyday racism, gender relations, powerlessness and self-empowerment are pointedly put into words (and images).
The films:
| Stefan Panhans | Anima Overdrive | D 2022 | 4:18
| Helga Davis & Anouk De Clercq | OK | BE/USA 2021 | 4:53
| eddie d. | Majesteit | NL 2009 | 2:13
| Antonio Muntadas | Media Ecology Ads | USA 1982 | 12:29
| John Smith | Associations | UK 1975 | 7:00
| Shelly Silver | Small Lies, Big Truth | USA 1999 | 18:48
| Laure Prouvost | OWT | UK 2007 | 3:35
| Julian Paul | Maschinenbauergemetzel | D 2022 | 2:58
Further information about the venue City 46 can be found here.
The program is part of the ongoing curatorial series film:art, which exhibits films between art and cinema.
Sunday, January 21, 2024, 11:30 a.m.
15 Euro/10 Euro, 75 min.
With registration at info@weserburg.de, max. 12 people
Yoga for Everyone
Yoga class with Gabriele Kroll in the exhibition Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN
75-minute yoga class for anyone interested with Gabriele Kroll in the exhibition “Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN”. Afterwards, there will be a get-together with refreshments in the library. The exhibition and the museum can be explored before and after.
Please bring comfortable clothing and a yoga mat. If you do not have your own mat, please let us know when you register.
Sunday, February 18, 2024, 11:30 a.m.
15 Euro/10 Euro, 75 min.
With registration at info@weserburg.de, max. 12 people
Yoga for Everyone
Yoga class with Gabriele Kroll in the exhibition Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN
75-minute yoga class for anyone interested with Gabriele Kroll in the exhibition “Kay Rosen. NOW AND THEN”. Afterwards, there will be a get-together with refreshments in the library. The exhibition and the museum can be explored before and after.
Please bring comfortable clothing and a yoga mat. If you do not have your own mat, please let us know when you register.