Sisyphus
Initially trained as an academic, Rosen has long explored the study of linguistics. She became an artist in the late 1970s, launching an over four-decade career investigating the intersection of language and visual representation. Rosen operates across media, including drawing, painting, printmaking, book design, sculpture, installation, and video. Her work depends on the affective and conceptual possibilities of written words, whose material, formal, and structural properties she creatively manipulates, thereby exploiting the performative nature of language and expanding its signifying potential.
A rumination on futility and hope, Sisyphus is a single-channel, seven-and-a-half-minute video animation that belongs to Rosen’s "Lists" series, which the artist has worked on since the late 1980s. As is typical of her work, Sisyphus combines seriality and intellectual rigor with humor and a touch of playfulness. Its title is eponymous with that of the infamous figure from Greek mythology who cheats death, thus attracting the ire of Zeus. For his transgression, Sisyphus is banished to Hades and condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill. In the video, which takes its conceptual cue from its namesake, "Sisyphus" is spelled out in Garamond Italic font in seventy different ways, one handmade version per frame, each of them phonetically plausible but factually incorrect. (Few other words would have served this purpose, thanks to the letters and letter combinations that comprise Sisyphus.) Every attempt, as Rosen calls it, to spell Sisyphus correctly is accompanied by a drum roll that concludes with a "ta-da" tap. In this way, the soundtrack creates the expectation of success without ever fulfilling it, prolonging the viewer's anticipation of finality.
A rumination on futility and hope, Sisyphus is a single-channel, seven-and-a-half-minute video animation that belongs to Rosen’s "Lists" series, which the artist has worked on since the late 1980s. As is typical of her work, Sisyphus combines seriality and intellectual rigor with humor and a touch of playfulness. Its title is eponymous with that of the infamous figure from Greek mythology who cheats death, thus attracting the ire of Zeus. For his transgression, Sisyphus is banished to Hades and condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill. In the video, which takes its conceptual cue from its namesake, "Sisyphus" is spelled out in Garamond Italic font in seventy different ways, one handmade version per frame, each of them phonetically plausible but factually incorrect. (Few other words would have served this purpose, thanks to the letters and letter combinations that comprise Sisyphus.) Every attempt, as Rosen calls it, to spell Sisyphus correctly is accompanied by a drum roll that concludes with a "ta-da" tap. In this way, the soundtrack creates the expectation of success without ever fulfilling it, prolonging the viewer's anticipation of finality.
Artwork Details
- Title: Sisyphus
- Artist: Kay Rosen (American, born Corpus Christi, Texas 1947)
- Date: 1991/2011
- Medium: Single-channel analog video, recreated as digital video; black-and-white; sound; 7 min., 30 sec.
- Dimensions: Variable
- Classification: Variable Media
- Credit Line: Gift of Clayton Press and Gregory Linn, 2023
- Object Number: 2023.357
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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