Reading Between Much More Than Just the Lines in ‘lifeli(k)e’

Jointly presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Otis Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, “Kay Rosen: lifeli(k)e” is an engaging and at times exhilarating mid-career survey of the artist’s word-based paintings, drawings and photographs. Throughout this comprehensive two-part exhibition, Rosen’s love of language is palpable and infectious: She delights in the materiality of words and in the multiple levels on which they operate, and passes that enjoyment along to her viewers.

Co-organized by MOCA associate curator Connie Butler and Otis College critic-in-residence Terry R. Meyers, the show (the first major U.S. survey of Rosen’s work) includes paintings, wall paintings, drawings, photographs, video art and other text-based projects. The Otis Gallery covers the first 15 years of Rosen’s career (1972-1987), while the MOCA installation focuses on work from the past decade.

Throughout her work, the Gary, Ind.-based artist has masterfully exploited the multivalent possibilities of language. Rosen’s paintings are meant to be simultaneously read and viewed. All manner of puns, palindromes and anagrams are encrypted within her colorful and arresting works. Letters, words or phrases are typically arranged against monochrome backgrounds in ways that stymie efforts to “read” them in a straightforward manner.

Like artists Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, with whom she is often compared, Rosen views language as essentially political in nature. Words have color and heft; they can be used as a wedge--or a bridge--between different groups of people. To put it as Rosen might, words are an integral part of the way we see the wor(l)d. But Rosen doesn’t view words as weapons. Instead, she uncovers the potential for other meanings that already exist in the words she paints.

Otis Gallery shows Rosen’s early influences, which include Bruce Nauman’s often truculent re-codings of colloquial language and Larry Rivers’ incorporation of stencil cutouts in his paintings. After earning a graduate degree in languages and linguistics, Rosen shifted her focus away from academia and toward visual art. Fueled by interests in experimental dance, performance and choreography, Rosen began to make drawings and performance-based photographs that combined text, photographed actions and/or diagrams in ways that revealed the underlying, language-based structures of each.

“A Song and Dance” (1978) intersperses images of a dancer’s feet with lines of text based on an infamous malapropism uttered by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Tinkering with Daley’s words until they appear nonsensical Rosen demonstrates that language “moves,” not with the grace and fluidity of a prima ballerina, but with the stumbling gait of a politician famous for his unintentionally revealing verbal gaffes.

Rosen’s conceptually driven pieces eventually segue into the word-based paintings that make up the bulk of the MOCA show. Rosen’s use of bold lettering and eye-popping color combinations makes these paintings unexpectedly voluptuous. They are also fecund, each word bearing multiple offspring, double and triple entendres.

A painting from 1987 includes three horizontal lines of red, italicized text set against a black background. Read (and red) line by line, the words appear as follows: “assass/in in the the/ater.”

After a few moments of scrutiny, you apprehend the words’ connection to the painting’s title: “John Wilkes Booth.”

Interacting with Rosen’s paintings is a full-bodied experience that vibrantly engages many different aspects of the physical being. Mind and body act in concert--eyes search the text, the brain struggles to decode it, lips and tongue spell out letters and words in an effort to “sound out” possible meanings.

Rosen’s word-paintings also share formal and structural similarities with certain types of children’s play. The multicolored, stacked structure of “Untitled Grid” (1990), for example, brings to mind rows of alphabet building blocks that can be rearranged and toppled at will.

The pleasure you get from wrapping your brain around these colorful cryptograms is also strangely reminiscent of childhood puzzle-solving: “grayv” and “feltipen” are relatively easy to figure out, but what about “(lmno),” “mblmblm” and “rstuvw?” (Hint: The titles of Rosen’s paintings often contain “clues” to their meanings).

The 13 rose-hued word-paintings that make up the installation “Corpus” (1992) provide a fitting culmination to the show. The paintings’ block-like arrangement against the wall looks rather like a cut-out ransom note; each individual painting contains a sort of clue. For example, a tiny rectangle is cut from the canvas containing the word “out”; a painting of the word “miami” contains the words “m.i.a.,” “I” and “I am.”

This work seems to indicate that the missing person or body in question is you, the viewer who completes Rosen’s paintings. You must invest time and energy in these works, which are meant to be deciphered as well as contemplated. As a result, the pleasures of this show linger long after you leave. Don’t be surprised if, on your way home, you find yourself scrutinizing the road signs for double entendres and hidden messages.

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* Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 626-6222. Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Blvd., Westchester, (310) 665-6905. Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Both shows continue through Feb. 14.