Brion Nuda Rosch’s work is inviting yet unpredictable. His diverse combinations of materials gently lead viewers to unexpected discoveries. These deceptively simple works present humorously profound situations- Rosch's simple act of placing one image of a waterfall on top of another complicates pictorial space, subject-object hierarchy, and combinative logic. Such playful sleight of hand pervades most of his works, and adds a wink to the deep resonances that they evoke. Neither reclusive obsessions nor simply vehicles for expression, Rosch's works function as signposts and touchstones of his own investigation into his singular understanding of the world.
The work can be divided into various categories: Rosch makes collages by combining found images, paints onto images he finds, paints objects and arranges them, makes objects, and constructs choreographed installations of images and objects. While his making activities can be understood as separate from the numerous shows that he has curated and the installations he presents in his residential art space, as well as the various projects that he hosts online, in truth they are all intertwined. Rosch’s collection of interconnected activities extends well beyond the scope of this book. Together they form an integrated set of inputs and outlets that operate at different levels of authorship, and on different platforms of display.
Each of these endeavors is approached with equal care, and the same logic of selection, alteration, and intersection. Whether painting a house or painting a painting, for Rosch the immediate task and material at hand claim the most importance. Each of his actions is equally considered—arranging lunch becomes an artwork, eating it a performance. The presentation of work and even the layout of this book are not only vitally important, but, in a way, works of art themselves. Rosch’s consistent, attentive approach enables his diverse influences to migrate from one endeavor to another—between the works in his oeuvre, between his making and his curating, and between his life and his art.
Through his simple means—basic maskings, removals, and additions—Rosch plumbs the profundity of placing one idea upon another, producing results not unlike a warm, soft chuckle. Beneath their humor, the works suggest the need to reevaluate seemingly stable beliefs, yet wonderfully manage to avoid the paranoid anxiety that usually accompanies such fundamental pondering. The alluring world glimpsed through Rosch’s art is inviting and unexpected; safer, warmer, and stranger than the one from which we enter it.
Foreword by Zachary Royer Scholz
From forthcoming book soon to be released by Little Paper Planes