Tim Rollins
September 2004 Relating to the works of Tim Rollins & K.O.S.
In 1981 the artist Tim Rollins began to teach art as a special education programme, seeking to combine his own art-making with the teachings of art to black and Puerto Rican public school children in the South Bronx. Rollins had studied with Joseph Kosuth at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Soon he founded the 'Art and Knowledge' workshop which doubled as a collective studio and an after-school workshop programme. The group of children enganged with Rollins on various projects called themselves the 'K.O.S.', which is an acronym for 'Kids Of Survival'. Rollins' unorthodox teaching method begins with taking a literary classic or suite of images attempting to make relevant the central message of the story to the group.
As he reads aloud, frequently paraphrasing difficult of obscure passges from a particular novel, the students quickly sketch the images which come in to their minds. The students call this method 'jamming'. The group have previously used Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Antony or Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlett Letter as sources for their work.
Usually the works consist of overlaying image onto text. Painting or printing on text, particularly a classic text of literature, can be seen as a form of protest against the failure of the education system in the simultaneous 'destruction and construction' of the text'. (1)
The group discuss themes in the text, study art historical precedents and then translate the theme to their own everyday situation and local environment where problems such as 'crack; and AIDS are prevalent.
The painting, Through the Looking Glass, is closely related to the prints Black/White Alice. Based on Alice's adventures, it was conceived entirely by the women in the group. They responded particularly to the passage which describes Alice as growing so large that she fills an entire room. To these young women, her predicament symbolised the social constrictions facing adolescent women in their community. The idea to paint Alice black-on-black came from Annette Rosada who had seen Ad Reinhardt painting in the Museum of Modern Art, in which a barely discernible cruciform grid is suspended in a darkly luminous monochromatic field. (2)
By taking 'kids' to museums, reading to them from classics and by teaching them the mechanics of art-making, Rollins declares that they are producing work which is:
2. Lawrence Rinder, Viewpoints: Tim Rollins and K.O.S (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. February - April 1988), no pagination
3. Garrels, p. 40
As he reads aloud, frequently paraphrasing difficult of obscure passges from a particular novel, the students quickly sketch the images which come in to their minds. The students call this method 'jamming'. The group have previously used Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Antony or Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlett Letter as sources for their work.
Usually the works consist of overlaying image onto text. Painting or printing on text, particularly a classic text of literature, can be seen as a form of protest against the failure of the education system in the simultaneous 'destruction and construction' of the text'. (1)
The group discuss themes in the text, study art historical precedents and then translate the theme to their own everyday situation and local environment where problems such as 'crack; and AIDS are prevalent.
The painting, Through the Looking Glass, is closely related to the prints Black/White Alice. Based on Alice's adventures, it was conceived entirely by the women in the group. They responded particularly to the passage which describes Alice as growing so large that she fills an entire room. To these young women, her predicament symbolised the social constrictions facing adolescent women in their community. The idea to paint Alice black-on-black came from Annette Rosada who had seen Ad Reinhardt painting in the Museum of Modern Art, in which a barely discernible cruciform grid is suspended in a darkly luminous monochromatic field. (2)
By taking 'kids' to museums, reading to them from classics and by teaching them the mechanics of art-making, Rollins declares that they are producing work which is:
About survival- survival as individuals, as a group, as a people, a nation, a species. And it's about the survival of the books themselves, literature, language, culture. That's why knowledge is so important, because without knowledge about how the world works and where our ideas and hopes come from, there can be no freedom, there can be no democracy. Knowledge isn't power in itself - it's what you do with that information that makes the difference. (3)
1. ed. Gary Garrels, Amerika, Tim Rollins and K.O.S (Dia Foundation, New York, October 1989 - June 1990)p. 392. Lawrence Rinder, Viewpoints: Tim Rollins and K.O.S (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. February - April 1988), no pagination
3. Garrels, p. 40
Jennifer Ramkalawon