KAY ROSEN
"What Women Want", 2020
Acrylic gouache on watercolor paper
Unframed: 26 x 18 inches (66 x 45.2 cm)
Framed: 28 x 20 inches (71.1 x 50.8 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Selected by Barbara Toll

Kay Rosen (b. 1943, Corpus Christi, TX). The visual possibilities of language have been the primary focus of Kay Rosen’s practice since 1968, when she traded in academic study for what she describes as her endless inquiry into language-based art. The ontological use of language, and the mutability between word and image, are fundamental to her work. In paintings, drawings, murals, prints, collages, and videos, she seeks to generate new meaning from everyday words and phrases, utilizing unconventional graphic strategies and typographic properties beyond those traditionally found on the printed page. While sociopolitical issues often form the bedrock of Rosen’s artwork, she emphasizes that her work is driven not by politics but by language, following it to whatever place it takes her.

Rosen’s recent solo exhibition, Kay Rosen: NOW AND THEN, was presented at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany, from November 18, 2023, through March 31, 2024. Her billboard-sized mural HI was installed on permanent public view at the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, in March of 2023. In 2021, Rosen was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC to create a site-responsive installation for the Gallery’s East Building; her large-scale painting, entitled SORRY, was on view through March 2022. Rosen’s work is included in many public collections like the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Rosen currently lives and works in Gary, IN, and New York.