The End of the World with Matthew Rose

End of the world getting you down? It can be hard carrying the globe on your shoulders.

Look at the topic through the eyes of artist Matthew Rose, whose website offers many pleasures. I found Rose serendipitously, through Ricardo Bloch, of Amphibious Andromeda. Readers of elenabella know that I've posted about Bloch's work before: click on his name in the labels below for a full stream of previous web messages.

Here are some images from Rose's THE END OF THE WORLD exhibit at the William Turner Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, last September 18 - October 15, 2008. Looks like it was a fascinating show, with collages, drawings, sculptures, and miscellaneous objects, many of which are still available over the web.

Rose has just posted a call to artists for a new show,
A BOOK ABOUT DEATH: AN UNBOUND BOOK ON THE SUBJECT OF DEATH,
to open Thursday, 10 September 2009. Here are the deets:

Exhibition: 10 - 22 September 2009
Emily Harvey Foundation 537 Broadway New York City, New York 10012 USA

1000 Artists Produce Each An Edition Of 500 Postcards In A Sprawling Unbound Book About Death. 1000 pages, edition: 500.

An Open Call To Artists Worldwide To Contribute To A BOOK ABOUT DEATH.
A BOOK ABOUT DEATH is an open, unbound book produced by artists worldwide. Artists are invited to create a "page" in the form of a postcard about death– any aspect about death. Works can be of any design, personal or conceptual, color or black and white.

The original work about death stays with you, the artist; the 500 postcards produced from the work is for the exhibition, and are sent to the gallery.
Artists can include any information about themselves on the cards, front or back.
The 500 post cards are then mailed to the gallery in New York City for exhibition.

A BOOK ABOUT DEATH takes its inspiration from the late, underground American artist Ray Johnson (1927 - 1995). Ray Johnson’s unbound “book” of the same title was mailed to his New York Correspondence School “students” and included pages in his idiosyncratic style that were funny, sad and ironic “one-page essays” on death. With the A BOOK ABOUT DEATH project, artists are invited to plunge into the subject in creating their own pages that score the dramatic final dance of death.

EXHIBITION & EVENT: Each artist contribution will be displayed in the Emily Harvey Foundation gallery space in New York. Visitors will be free to take cards and create their own book about death. As the cards are removed, the exhibition will disappear.

During the exhibition, a lecture/panel discussion will take place with a number of leading writers, curators, artists and collectors bringing together a number of salient ideas about death, books, mail art works, Ray Johnson and the global nature of A BOOK ABOUT DEATH. The panel list will be announced when it is finalized this summer.