Tim Rollins and KOS
TIM ROLLINS and K.O.S.
Wesley Martin Berg, Benjamin Volta, Daniel Castillo, Ace Ehrlich
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.’s partnership is the most prolific and longest-running teacher-and-student collaboration in contemporary art. A trained art educator, Rollins founded K.O.S.—short for Kids of Survival—in the early ‘80s as an experimental program run through his Art of Knowledge Workshop, . Scrambling the tried and failed techniques of much public school education, Rollins threw out the rule book encouraging the so called “at risk” students to relate their studies of literature, politics, and history with their personal experiences. In a process called “jammin,” Rollins or a student of K.O.S. reads aloud from a selected text while other group members draw, paint, or otherwise respond to the text.
Many of the finished artworks incorporate pages from the selected texts or sheets of classical music with graphic and minimal shapes drawn or painted over them. “What we’re doing changes people’s conception about who can make art, how art is made, who can learn and what’s possible, because a lot of these kids had been written off by the school system. This is our revenge.” These workshops continue both in the Bronx and throughout the world. Over time, the K.O.S. collaborations have grown to incorporate woodcut, sculpture, painting, and printmaking.
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
THE GREAT GATSBY ( after F. S. Fitzgerald ) 2011
Acrylic on book pages on canvas 36 x 60 “
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
THE GREAT GATSBY II ( after F. S. Fitzgerald ) 2011
Acrylic on book pages on canvas 36 x 60 “
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
