Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History is the first major museum retrospective of work by artist, activist, and teacher Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), a group of artists originally made up of Rollins’s students from Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx. Rollins and his students are known for their large, minimalist works of art created on the pages of books cut out and laid in a grid on canvas. Together, they have developed a collaborative strategy that combines lessons in reading and writing with the production of works of art.
Rollins and K.O.S. have produced paintings, prints, photographs, and sculpture based on literary texts such as Franz Kafka’s Amerika, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and musical scores, including “Winterreise” by Franz Schubert. On view in ICA’s second floor gallery September 11-December 13, 2009, the exhibition will include over 20 works created between 1984 and 2000. The Emmy-award-winning documentary film on Tim Rollins and K.O.S. will screen continuously in the mezzanine.
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History is curated by Ian Berry, Malloy Curator of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, in collaboration with the artists, and is coordinated at the ICA by Kate Kraczon, assistant curator.
After ICA, this exhibition travelled to the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (January 23 – May 31, 2010).
