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Tim Rollins + K.O.S.: installation of the complete Amerika painting series

October 13, 1989–June 17, 1990, Dia Chelsea

Overview

Tim Rollins + K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) is a collaborative group consisting of high-school students and artist Tim Rollins. The group formed in 1981 in the South Bronx, New York. This exhibition featured a collection of thirteen large-scale paintings from the Amerika series, created from 1984–89. Inspired by the Franz Kafka novel of the same title, the works spoke to the novel’s protagonist as he navigated immigrant life in New York. The paintings featured dynamic, golden forms in the shape of horns, trumpets, and ornamental objects that collected on top of a background grid of the novel’s pages. Eighty study drawings for the series and a six-foot-long, seventy-panel painting accompanied the exhibition.

Artist

Tim Rollins and K.O.S.

Tim Rollins was born in Pittsfield, Maine, in 1955. He died in New York City in 2017. His collaborative group, K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), live and work in New York City.

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Books

Amerika - Tim Rollins + K.O.S (Hardcover)

Amerika - Tim Rollins + K.O.S., published in conjuction with exhibition at Dia in Chelsea in 1989.

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Amerika - Tim Rollins + K.O.S (Softcover)

Amerika - Tim Rollins + K.O.S., published in conjuction with exhibition at Dia in Chelsea in 1989.

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