02/09/2017
We recently had the opportunity to visit The Invisible Dog @ 51 Bergen Street in Brooklyn for a pop-up exhibition featuring work by multimedia artist Nick Von Kleist. "roseroserose" – which showcased silicone Virgin Mary statuettes, an altar draped in pink linens, and a wall of tiled photographs of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper – invited the viewer to either participate as an audience member seated around the altar or within the altar itself. The participant could walk onto the altar and bow over a silver bowl in order to immerse oneself in the aural poems composed by the artist. "roseroserose" revealed fragments of Von Kleist’s life without compartmentalization or an overly romantic veneer. Here he delves into a deeper analysis of the work for us to share:
"roseroserose" is an interactive sound installation of a poem with the same name. The work examines grief and as a prism, when brought to light, projects a spectrum of memories and sentiments. My experience projected grief as death, s*x, food, and humor. To stay on the same metaphor, I wanted to paint each color I saw of myself, not just the pretty ones. The poem sketches a very specific time period: December 26, 2013 – February 6, 2014, compiling fragments from text messages, scruff messages, overheard conversations.
“I don’t want ma to die”
“then you do it”
“I don’t want ma to die”
“come f**k me then”
“I don’t want ma to die”
“I love you”
The poem is about intimacy, vulnerability, and also the ‘weirdness’ of death. The title of the work references Gertrude Stein’s famous poem, “Sacred Emily.” The poem describes the tension of signifier, signified and sound. Poetry utilizes this tension, demonstrating context’s role in language’s communicative function. I wanted to explore this with grief—how could I manipulate context to investigate and reveal different aspects of my process of grieving. Even though my grandmothers, Rose & Rose, never knew me as a q***r boy, I found more connections between grandson & fag than I had seen before. As my public and private personas were blending, I began to try and see this in Rose & Rose. A Rose is a grandmother, is a woman, is dying, is dead, is me. I began grieving as she was dying; seeing her as my grandmother, a patient, a woman, and how she influenced me. By collaging my memories in different compositions, I can see the prism of grief all at once.
