James Rosenquist

When working as a sign painter, Rosenquist’s job was to enlarge artwork for adverts to the size of billboards. This made him look at pictures differently: ‘I would take disparate images, put them together and try to make another sense out of them. It was almost like the idea of listening to radio and thinking about something in the abstract.’ Where the Water Goes is similarly constructed from a variety of separate sources. Cut-out shapes suggestive of human hair or waste are funnelled into a drainage pipe which extends out into the cosmos.