Semiotic
Scissorscoptics
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How To Join |
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Crumb Cake |
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Television |
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American Dream |
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The Experience |
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Screaming Woman |
By Tom Wachunas
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the
artist alone...the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world
by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution
to the creative act.” ― Marcel
Duchamp
“Psychologically, our thought - apart from its expression
in words - is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.” - Ferdinand de
Saussure
Semiotics (from Merriam-Webster):
a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with
their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and
comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.
Exhibit: OVERDOSE – art by Matthew Rose / at
John Strauss Studios, 236 Walnut Ave. NE, downtown Canton, Ohio / THROUGH APRIL
14, 2023 / (330) 456-0300 / Hours: Monday - Friday 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM /
https://john-strauss-furniture.myshopify.com/
An American artist,
writer and musician living and working in Paris, France, Matthew Rose has long
exhibited his collage works, paintings and drawings throughout Europe and the
US. He regularly contributes features and reviews to ArtBlog, at
https://www.theartblog.org/author/matthewrose/
Looking
for meaning and purpose in the mayhem of being alive on this beleaguered planet
during challenging times, have we overdosed on Plethora? Are we comfortably
numbed merchandizers and consumers, or hapless victims, of the worldly toomuchness
of our own making?
There are approximately
1,000 artworks in this exhibit – a dizzying abundance of mixed media somethings
about the conditions of our existential conditions. Signs, signals, insignias,
memes, messages. Many of these artaffects by Matthew Rose are collages /montages
on canvas or painted boards. Threaded throughout is an aesthetic spirit
inflected with conceptual and psychological elements of Surrealism, Pop, and
Dada.
Dada was a
reactionary art movement born out of the trauma and hysteria of World War I. Many
artists at that time rejected the nobler academic standards and practices that
had governed making and viewing art for generations. Dada could be angry,
cynical, ambiguous and funny all at once. It was an attitude often served up
with a hardy helping of wicked sarcasm.
Rose is something
of a prolific hunter-gatherer. His weapon? Scissors. His prey? All manner of
found printed stuff, both modern and vintage, mostly in the form of ads, illustrations,
comics, diagrams, photos and texts snipped from newspapers, magazines, books. Extracting
these items from their original settings, Rose arranges them on his surfaces
like puzzle pieces.
Some works are
simple and “quiet,” joining a few images of a representational nature to a
word, or phrase, floating on or embedded in a somewhat empty, minimalist-abstract
ground. Others are far busier affairs – dense agglomerations of wildly diverse
subjects that Rose sprinkles across the picture plane as if writing run-on
sentences in a free-flowing stream of consciousness. Or conscience?
Here’s where we as viewers intuitively seek
some sort of narrative nestled in the art. We look to connect. Consequently we rummage
and ruminate. We become co-creators,
co-conspirators, code-breakers, hunting for meaning. There’s no shortage of
targets. Whether cryptic, cautionary or celebratory, here’s where every picture
can tell a story and every story can spell a picture. Or a thousand of them.
Who are those twin women pictured at the
bottom of “The Experience?” What will really relieve their back pain?
And who’s the screaming woman in “Screaming Woman?” Maybe she’s Mother Earth.
Is she screaming her dismay, or her delight, at the multitude of her children’s
excesses, hilarious or horrific? Maybe she’s really laughing after all. Either
way, Mama’s making a lot of noise these days, and Dada never sleeps at night.
Enjoy the hunt.