Special Exhibitions

A Book About Death 

In conceiving A Book About Death, I knew I would use every possible sort of social media to attract interested artists from all parts of the world. The project asked artists to send 500 cards on the subject of death to The Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in New York, and the artist call was made through Blogger, FaceBook, Twitter, flickr, e mail, SKYPE and other net services (as well as the postal service) and then, because the project had taken hold, it went viral.  The opening in NYC was packed, and we broadcast it live across the world on the net. We made a YouTube video and that too, when viral.

And the entire exhibition – which was free to any and all – not only ended up in the permanent collection of MoMA (NY) and LACMA (LA,CA), but has gone global itself with exhibitions in a dozen venues across the world, most recently at MuBE and MoMA Wales (UK) with Montreal and Beijing exhibitions slated in the near future.  Everything is stored for the artists to use on the web site: http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/ including posters, texts, videos and a full catalog of the exhibition, plus all the ancillary exhibitions that have taken place since NY in September 2009. The purpose was to create something much larger than any one artist (and there were quite a few famous artists in this show, including Yoko Ono, Geoffrey Hendricks, Eric Andersen among others) and really see what we saw about a subject that is often taboo but also the driving force of much of the art produced today. 

MATTHEW ROSE
12 Rue Lalande 75014 PARIS, FRANCE
HTTP://MATTHEWROSESTUDIO.NET/
HTTP://ABOOKABOUTDEATH.BLOGSPOT.COM/