Matthew Rose — A Paris-Based Collagist Who Writes with Scissors
Matthew Rose
b. 1959, New York — Lives and works in ParisMatthew Rose was born in New York in 1959 and studied Semiotics at Brown University, graduating in 1981. He moved to Paris in 1992 and has lived and worked there ever since, based near the market street Rue Daguerre.
His materials are vintage maps, textbooks, musical scores and magazines gathered from Parisian flea markets. By cutting and reconstructing these aged papers he generates entirely new meaning — what he calls "spelling with scissors." Rooted in the spirit of DADA and Fluxus, his work holds pop humour and sharp social critique in the same frame, drawing on the influence of Joseph Cornell, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson.
Rose is also known for large-scale wall-to-wall installations — massive displays of individual collage works that reinvent the act of reading through image and text.
In 2009 Rose conceived and curated A Book About Death, inspired by the artist Ray Johnson. This ongoing participatory project — an unbound book and travelling exhibition on the subject of death — has been shown in over 30 cities worldwide, from New York to São Paulo to Australia.
