Anglais : English Spirit & French Desire

Anglais, a new print from Matthew Rose for Keep Calm Gallery, marries English spirit to French desire.

In a surreal sprint through the garden, perhaps Eden, perhaps Kensington, Anglais reminds us that London life is a mad dash, and a dash mad. Yes, the Englishman's upper torso is missing, but that never stopped the Paris-based American artist from making a run (or a pun).

Each colourful print has been signed and dated by the artist. Anglais was produced by Burning Boy Press Paris's Mariela Cadiz.  Click directly on the image above to enlarge.

The original collage will be on display at Matthew's latest solo exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London. Click here for more information on the Scared But Fresh show.

* Signed & dated by the artist
* Giclee print on Hahnemuhle paper
* 338mm by 250mm (13¼ by 9¾ inches)

* Price: £32.00 Unframed

Click here to purchase directly from KEEP CALM GALLERY. 

Matthew Rose's The End Of The World

THE END OF THE WORLD (REALLY BUILT TO LAST) is Paris-based artist Matthew Rose's surreal fantasy about the fragility of world we live in and the end of the world we've built.

"The end of the world is in fact a created fiction with a decidedly real dimension," says the artist. "It's a dream and yet it's one we live in, walk through, sleep off. I'm reminded of James Joyce's famous line: 'History is a nightmare I'm trying to awaken from.'"

Based on an original collage from 2008, THE END OF THE WORLD, reports from the frontiers of the real and dream worlds, where foods and animals, naughty little boys and errant little girls enter into the visual field and run, jump, hang and float in and around an assortment of human narratives that are veering dangerously out of control.

This work, and others in the series, appears in Masters: Collage (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, USA May 2010). The print is available exclusively from Keep Calm Gallery London.  There are only 45 prints remaining in the edition of 85. Price: £38.00. (Note: The new shipment to Keep Calm is arriving the week of September 20, so be assured there are prints to purchase).

[Click images to enlarge and see detail.]

This print also has a border for framing.

• Limited edition of 85
• Signed, dated & numbered by the artist
• Giclee print on Hahnemuhle paper
• 290mm by 290mm (11½ by 11½ inches)

The original collage measures 50 x 50 cm, and is available.  Contact Matthew Rose for information.

The remaining 45 prints in the edition were expertly produced by Mariela Cadiz working with Burning Boy Press.  Mariela, based in Paris, produced fine art, grand format ink jet prints for photographers and artists of the highest quality.

If you are a photographer or artist interested in producing one-off or limited edition prints, please get in touch. Contact Burning Boy Press to learn more about high-quality digital printing in Paris.

Matthew Rose's YOU-->ME : A Silkscreen Edition

You ––> Me : Silkscreen print, after collage, 47.5 x 38 cm, three colors, on Arches Rives, 300 gram paper. Edition: 100. All prints are signed and numbered.  Some 20 artist proofs were also produced on a variety of fine art papers, along with several prints on fine art papers in gold, silver, and pink.

The print is a little piece of visual poetry, a sort of lexical love song, a Valentine.

The print was published by Burning Boy Press. Burning Boy Press produces mostly high-quality digital prints in Paris.

The original collage, measures 47.5 x 38 cm, dates from 1999 and was exhibited in Berlin at Galerie Tristesse (2006) and in Paris at Bernard Matussière (2009), the original is available for purchase. [Contact for price].

You ––> Me, 2010, was printed at Michel Hosszù's atelier in Paris in a single day.  Photograph of Michel Hosszù (below) taken in front of his massive silkscreen piece "Grimaces" in his studio in the Bastille section of Paris.

Michel Hosszù designed the screens for printing using three separate colors – two shades of gray and one final black.  Together we moved through the edition, racking up the pieces (photo, right), finally playing with the registration for some of the proofs and off-edition works at the end of the day.  The gold, silver and pink pieces were spray painted prior to printing. Two pieces – one gold, one silver – were printed on A3-sized canvases.

Of note: As a boy I was often working with my father in Queens, New York, producing silkscreens for his retail clients.  The screens – some as large as four meters wide and with as many as 28 colors – were beautiful in themselves.  The variety of paints and lacquers and the teamwork needed to pull the giant squeegee across such a giant screens remain potent images in my mind about the process of reproducing images. There is a gorgeous (although somewhat toxic) perfume involved in silkscreening.

As a teenager, I held many jobs in the silkscreen shop, from stretching the dylon fabric over the frames to spreading out the emulsion, position the frame for printing, then blotting out the tiny holes left after the UV printing lamp hit the acetate positive with the image.  Back then the image silhouettes were often cut out of ruby lith, and not punched out of a laser printer via Photoshop file.  It's a process that combines photography, handiwork, low end technology, but with spectacular results.  Sadly, a great deal of silkscreen production has been taken over by digital printing; and while both are wonderful, there is nothing like the creation of a silkscreen print. It's beautiful and delightfully messy.

The YOU --> ME prints are available through Keep Calm Gallery while a few will also be available at my exhibition SCARED BUT FRESH at Orange Dot Gallery in London on October 6, 2010.  

To purchase a YOU --> ME print, please contact Keep Calm Gallery, by clicking here.

Les Affaires

'Les Affaires' is a stunning new limited edition print from Paris based American artist Matthew Rose. It is available exclusively from Keep Calm Gallery in London.

Like a mall from hell and high water, Matthew Rose takes on this vast subject with a surreal tour through the commercial center of his mind with Les Affaires. Expertly produced by Mariela Cadiz and Burning Boy Press in Paris, Les Affaires brings consumption and all its myriad expressions to a neat explosion.

Here, Freud (lower left corner) considers the expansive narratives from behind a silhouette of Popeye-as-Buddah. A family ponders a side of beef, a salesman dangles a naked blue girl in offering from his battery-as-desk (a housewife's head). A child's arms are weighed on a scale. One of a large pair of hands beholds a fashion plate – her own head morphed into a construction of pipes topped by a fan – while the other hand readies a pen for signing over something of value.

Indeed value is explored and remade as acts of gloating, comedy and narcissistic wonder and feeding. Matthew Rose's Les Affaires, a print based upon an enormous collage takes 'business as usual' to startling new heights and frighteningly new depths. "I live on a market street in Paris," says the artist. "This happens every day."

• Limited edition of 100
• Signed, numbered, titled and dated by the artist
• High quality giclee print
• 310gsm Hahnemuhle fine art etching paper
• 750mm by 700mm (29½ by 27½ inches)

Price: £150.00, Unframed.  See more images and order from Keep Calm Gallery.

If you are interested in the original collage on board, Les Affaires, 1.5 x 1.3 m, (2009), click here: Contact. 

Rubens Rounding Third: Unique Baseball Art Stamps

Matthew Rose takes a swing at the art of baseball in his prize-winning art stamp sheet, Rubens Rounding Third. Printed on gummed paper and perforated, the stamp sheet is the artist's ode to baseball, art, Rubens, stamps in a sexy twist on turning the corner, in this case third base.

This collector's piece is headed for Cooperstown, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Upstate New York, as well as a permanent place at the Philatelic Museum of Oaxaca (MUFI), which awarded the artist first prize in their world wide competition for 'Baseball Philately + The Art Inspired by Philately'.

"My guess is that Americans of all sizes will be interested in this work, not only those who love baseball and art," said Matthew, "but also those who grew up playing the game and found themselves distracted by some attractive fan in the crowd."

• Printed on gummed stamp sheets
• Signed and numbered by the artist
• Limited edition of 1000
  
• 296mm by 407mm (11½ by 16 inches)

Available from KEEP CALM GALLERY.  CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE FROM KEEP CALM GALLERY (LONDON).

Immaculate Perception : Matthew Rose

Surrealism, asserted André Breton, was above all "a revolutionary movement."  And that movement, both visual and literary, was largely identified with the dream. Shock, non-sequitur, unlikely but often gorgeous juxtapositions were the signature elements of surrealist works. These ideas come to term in Immaculate Perception by Matthew Rose. 

Beautifully printed by Mariela Cadiz in Paris, the work is a lullaby in the surrealist cannon: A young girl in a bob cut dreams in a dream of a lemon tree. She is the revolution, says the artist. 

Based on a smaller collage, Immaculate Perception is making a second tour of Keep Calm Gallery. This new version measures 80 cm by 60 cm and is printed on fine art paper in an edition of 50. The edition is available exclusively from Keep Calm Gallery (London). Price: £130.00, unframed.

• Limited edition of 50
• Signed, numbered and dated by the artist
• High quality giclee print
• Acid-free fine art paper
• 80 cm by 60 cm (31½ by 23¾ inches)

To find out more about producing high quality digital prints in Paris – prices, technical specifications, papers available – please contact Burning Boy Press: MATTHEW.ROSE.PARIS [at] GMAIL.COM.