Kay Rosen

Kay Rosen’s language-based paintings, drawings, editions, collages, installations, and one video have been exhibited in museums and institutions nationally and internationally for over three decades, among them Art Gallery of New South Wales (2014-2015); The Art Institute of Chicago (2000, 2011, 2013); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011-2013); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1996, 2012); Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (2012); the Honolulu Museum of Art (2012); Aspen Art Museum (2012-2013); Christchurch Public Art Gallery, New Zealand (2011, 2012 ongoing); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (inaugural exhibition 2008); Indianapolis Museum of Art (2005 ongoing); Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2004); The Drawing Center, New York (2002); MASS MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (1999, 2001); the Whitney Biennial 1991 (as part of Group Material “AIDS Timeline”), 2000; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1994, 1996, 2004, 2010, 2011); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (solo survey exhibition 1998-99); Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (1991); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1990); and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1984). Rosen’s work has also been shown in numerous solo and group gallery exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, and it resides in collections worldwide. Artforum, Art in America, ArtUS, and The New York Times are a few of the publications that have featured her work. Rosen has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships (1987, 1989, 1995), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2009), and an SJ Weiler Fund award (2013). A book about her work, Kay Rosen: AKAK, was published by Regency Art Press, New York City, in 2009. Rosen lives in the midwestern part of the U.S. and has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for twenty years. More can be learned about her at www.kayrosen.com.

Trained in languages and linguistics, Rosen rejected academia in favor of a visual approach to language early on, starting over as a “self-taught” artist from square one. She began an exploration of the intersection of meaning and structure in language through color, materials, scale, composition, and graphic design. In a 2010 interview Rosen said, “When it comes to reading my work, throw out all the rules you ever learned: spelling, spacing, capitalization, margins, linear reading, composition...all your old reading habits will be useless."


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