William Rosen: Artist Statement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

CONCRETE POETRY, PATTERN POETRY or SHAPE POETRY is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on. It is sometimes referred to as VISUAL POETRY, a term that has evolved to have a distinct meaning of its own.

I was first exposed to concrete poetry in New York City during the late Sixties. I began writing my own version of visual poetry at about that time. I think the form I have arrived at has a stronger traditional narrative element and is therefore more emotionally complex than other visual or concrete poetry I have seen. I have been attempting to make paintings of my visual poetry for about twenty years. These are the first pieces I am satisfied with.

In the Recent Work 2002--2005 which remains an ongoing project, I am and have been creating a version of densely layered abstract space. This space is literal rather than illusionistic. In fact my paintings expand beyond the picture plane to become reliefs--again, literal rather than illusionistic depth. In order to create these pieces I have developed a material that is my own innovation. It is a pigmented oil, wax and resin mixture, which I apply in ribbon-like strips that are soft and flexible. These ribbon-like strips, which dry hard, are placed one on top of the other, much like brush strokes, but are in fact, tangible things, rather than marks. Sometimes these strips are applied in handfuls: quickly, randomly and chaotically. Or they may be placed one by one, in a slow deliberate orderly rhythm.

The Earlier Work begins with an installation view and a detail studio view of sculpture from 1970. Even though these cylindrical and conical tubes were meticulously made, they were not, in themselves, interesting to me. They existed for a purpose. That purpose was to limit or provide physical boundaries for varying quantities of empty space. It was looking inside these tubes (the eye filling up each different unit of space, comparing one to another, looking at nothing yet concentrated in a peculiar sort of way) that interested me. They were really perceptual tools that I used to quiet the mind and look; in other words, that I used to develop the abstract gaze.

From about 1976--1984 I worked on a series called the Signpainter's paintings. These paintings are about process and materials and trying to import meaning into what are essentially abstract paintings. The painting process was the mantra-like repetitive stenciling of a particular word like freedom, identity, truths, jealousy, solitude etc. For each painting I made about six different styles of plastic letter stencils of the particular word that was the title or subject of that painting. The stencils were about six inches high. The surfaces of these paintings were built up layers of oil paint and dry powdered pigment which I stuck directly on to an impasto oil medium.

The self portraits were a shift to a more careful way of working. At some point, after doing a number of these self portraits, I started combining the carefully drawn faces or figures with more rapidly and loosely made stencilled figures. One of these is included here: Self Portrait with Moving Figures.

The self portraits led to a series of pieces in which I combined two similar but different photographs with two photo realistic drawings of those photographs. A rhythmical abstract hyper-realistic hybrid form emerged. Two of these pieces, Generic Self Portraits #6 and #7 are included here.

After I finished with these photo-drawing pieces, I started to experiment again with process and materials. I made a primitive machine using pulleys, weights and a foot pedal to smash light bulbs. First I smashed the light bulbs on paper and then on raw canvas backed with eighth inch plywood. Two of these pieces are included here in Earlier Work.