Disaster Greeting Cards

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way
Disaster greeting cards

Bleeding dog

Drowning

Infected plants

Flood

The vapidity of the visual and textual sentiments of readymade greeting cards is hard to top, and their consequent potential as ground for collage is equally hard to resist. In her second solo show at ZieherSmith, featuring a series of new works, Sally-Ann Rowland digs beneath the saccharine surface of these printed ephemera for the rot that lies beneath, unearthing shadows, decay, and vomit-y spray that spreads across the image in the charming form of appliqué. Rowland’s colorful threads and beads eat their way across images as grossly Hallmark-esque as a sepia-toned golden retriever puppy, a mother ogling her newborn in high-contrast black-and-white, and a classic American farmstead scene in Technicolor blues and greens. With the addition of her parasitical decorations, the puppy finds himself lapping at a puddle of brown, bejeweled drool; the mother gets a face full of sequined puke; and the farmhouse is torn up by a vicious twister of black pearls. The added trimmings applied with an admirably delicate touch of glue gun and needle are less adornment than mold, each bauble a spore spreading organically across sugar coating, sponging off the cheap, easy nourishment that sustains it. Lori Waxman, ‘Critics’ Picks’, Artforum, 2004

Nuclear bomb

Jack the Ripper

Shipwreck

Demon picnic

Suicide

Meteorite

666

Lost in space

I'm Sorry You Feel That WayDisaster greeting cards

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way
Disaster greeting cards