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Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Spines by Mark Roth and Leon Brown. Marisa Malone contributes the exhibition essay:
I imagine going through artist and curator Mark Roth’s sketchbooks as something akin to an excavation, an archaeological dig through decades worth of material. Writer Leon Brown can attest it’s much more intuitive than that. At Adjacent to Life Gallery is the collaborative show Spines, featuring text by Brown paired with selections of Roth’s archive, on view from June 9th-July 14th.
Roth’s sketchbooks are dynamic in their function, “there's a diaristic aspect, there's free drawing, there’s collage, there's all sorts of permutations of how I use them,” Roth explains. One hundred and thirty sketchbooks in total, Brown and Roth went through all of them, selecting at first instinct which pages to show and narrowing it down to twelve books. “If we thought about it too hard,” Brown says, “we might have not done it.” They chose to avoid taking too critical an approach by simply asking themselves “what do we like?”
Through this process a dialogue formed between the text and the artwork. Brown’s distilled evocations bring us into a moment in time that’s been captured in Roth's sketchbooks, tying in themes that are present, not just within the pages on view, but within the books as a whole. “I like that all the information that is concealed or behind the scenes is relevant,” Roth says. The spaciousness of the text, both visually and narratively, in conjunction with Roth’s images, allows us to enter into these scenes, letting us feel what they are like rather than be told. “The test for these things is people's enjoyment of it and if they get an experience from it,” Brown says, “and also whether or not each of the contributions inhabit one another and I think they do. In my mind now they’re inseparable.”
Brown’s writing is sensitive to the images, colors, and energy in Roth’s work. “The love and attention has been put into trying to speak to the art and, where possible, contribute to what Mark’s captured,” says Brown, “the shape and the form of the words on the page are designed to be as sympathetic to the artwork as possible.” One of Brown’s strategies for this was to refrain from naming any colors. “The color field ones are particularly interesting,” notes Roth, “because in a way any one can work but it changes everything.”
Within this collaboration is a clear appreciation for one another's work and trust given to the process. “The idea hasn't needed to go through a number of different conceptions, we just did what we said we were going to do and it’s been a wonderful experience,” says Brown. “The generosity of Mark to give us access to his archive is extraordinary and I’m really grateful for that. It’s a privilege to be part of the reason to show it and get it out there.” The privilege is extended to us to not only get a glimpse into Roth’s impressive catalog but, through Brown’s granular sense of language, inhabit a world it helped inspire.
- Marisa Malone
Marisa Malone grew up in the Sierra foothills of Nevada. She studied writing and literature at The Evergreen State College and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has been published in BlazeVox Journal and Selfish Magazine, along with two self-published poetry chapbooks.
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Spines is on view through July 14, 2023 at the Adjacent To Life gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City). Opening reception: Tuesday, June 20, 7:00 - 9:00.
Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Blobsquatches by Mark Roth.
Roth’s paintings find inspiration in the cryptozoological artifact of blobsquatches – a blobsquatch being the indeterminate blob in a photograph that a keen-eyed observer ascertains is a visual capture of Sasquatch. Generally they take the form of forest views with a circle drawing one’s attention to the purported creature.
Roth contends the resilience of Bigfoot speaks to the persistent yearning to see primeval nature staring back at us in a form analogous to our own. In a blobsquatch the circling line is the essential component for it represents the culmination of careful scrutiny and an urgency to share the benefits of passionate looking. In these works the artist has made it his quest to locate evidence of Sasquatch in the paintings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The encircling line repeats so that the composition assumes a target shape, utilizing the notion that the bullseye represents an apogee of yearning – in this case to strike a connection with primordial painters in the wilderness of art and its making.
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Blobsquatches is on view through October 21 at the Adjacent to Life gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City).
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Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Announcing the Coming of the Sun.
This exhibition brings together the work of four artists all working with issues of replication and regeneration in a multifaceted approach to both process and content. By applying techniques of printmaking, collage, photomontage and painting each artist engages the social issues of contemporary life through artworks of multi-layered intention in their imagery and installation. The artists address the entangled and sprawling problems that have been unleashed on the planet in the time of the Anthropocene and speak to the precariousness and complexities of Being in this posthuman era.
The works represent a connection between visions of the Anthropocene as both an epic challenge and an opportunity to de-center the human and imagine a different, more accurate, empathetic, functional and enlivening relationship to other beings and systems. Here the artist acts as imaginative liaison for the agency of different beings, forms and structures, including that of future arrangements or yet-to-be-discovered loves.
Deborah Carruthers presents studies for a graphic score, Between the Song and the Silence: Hobrechtsfelde, Germany, based on the sounds of songbirds that have been largely extirpated from a now-verdant yet still-toxic landscape in Germany, while Margaret Hart envisions the intersection of human and non-human beings as a form of ever evolving patterns of life.
Gabriel Deerman sheds light on the linkages between Earth and human-induced change through repetition and chance. Mark Roth posits the idea that Being itself is ecstasy - with the sun as the animating energy that activates everything in our orbit.
Participating Artists:
Deborah Carruthers (Montréal, Québec, Canada)
The role of art and artists in providing a record of our evolving landscapes and environment is incalculable. Artwork can provide a record and timeline of loss and allow us to view and estimate rates of change. It can create nascent memories of what has vanished and remind us of our role in that loss. It can translate alternate perspectives of our ecologies and provoke public discourse.
As an artist who has often been preoccupied with translating environmental concerns into an artistic narrative, the opportunity to work with scientists in unpacking complex ideas and presenting them in another form has been critical to my practice.
Gabriel Deerman (Bella Bella, British Columbia, Canada)
These works began with a single climate change-related issue: Pine Beetle infestations. These have a status in common with contemporary weather events of being a ‘natural disaster’. The devastating effects of these sprawling infestations in North America can be traced back to logging practices that created ideal breeding conditions and were exacerbated by rising temperatures. In looking for the root of this specific problem, I was led from the boards my home is built with to the foundations of western rational thought, modernity, modernization and colonialism. When I began to trace the effects, they expanded outward from localized destruction of ecosystems to wildfires, to shifting economies, populations, and animal migratory patterns - creating a feedback loop which amplifies the already overwhelming situation. This particular issue serves as one example of the entangled, interwoven and self-replicating/perpetuation nature of the problems that unbridled capitalism has unleashed on this planet and the enormity and irreducibility of human impact in the Anthropocene.
Margaret Hart (Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
These new works are an evolution of an earlier body of work, the Situated Becomings series, where I considered the evolving understanding of gender in these Posthuman times. These works continue to explore gender issues across human and non-human integration, where gender is a form of becoming…becoming something new and expansive.
Science and art are my two main interests, and in this work I see them combined in imaginative ways. Genetic manipulation afforded by CRISPR technologies and our developing sense of the agency of all non-human beings merge in these pieces to explore possible outcomes or connections. Nature and technology have much to teach us and are venues to an expanded sense of humanity. My work scratches the surface of what may be and what is possible.
Mark Roth (New York, New York, USA)
Aurora is about the idea that Being itself is ecstasy. The sun/aurora/dawn is ecstasy and activates ecstasy. The grasses (a quote of Albrecht Dürer’s Great Piece of Turf) represent revery taking form. This visual quote along with the allusions to Bridget Riley and Frank Stella are intended to indicate an equivalency in terms of operation and nurturance between the ecosystems of Nature and Art.
Announcing the Coming of the Sun runs through April 23 and is on view at the Adjacent to Life pop-up gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City).
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The Shrouds draw inspiration from the Shroud of Turin – that relic which ostensibly records the moment Christ de-extincted Himself in a flash of brilliant light, mysteriously searing an image into the cloth. In painting terms I see them as resonant with Warhol’s Rorschach prints and the stain painting technique of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis.
Featured in Tactical Stream #5: "Free" - an exhibit at TBG that considers the externalized, concealed costs supporting unsustainable resource extraction and privilege.
The Opening is Monday July 1, 7-9 pm. The exhibit runs through July 7 at TBG, 616 East 9th St. NYC.
Thrilled to be presenting some Blobsquatch paintings at Cleveland's Zygote Press in a group show with three of my favorite artists and colleagues: Deborah Carruthers, Gabriel Deerman and Margaret Hart - who also curated the exhibit. There will be a reception and artist's talk on Friday March 8, 6:00 - 8:00pm. It runs through April 26.
From the gallery statement:
Capturing the Aura of the Already Said
This exhibition brings together the work of four artists all working with issues of replication and regeneration in a multifaceted approach to both process and content. By applying techniques of printmaking, collage, photomontage and painting each artist boldly engages the social issues of contemporary life through artworks of rich, multi-layered intention in their imagery and installation.
Carruthers, Deerman and Roth address in their work the entangled and sprawling problems which have been unleashed on the planet in the time of the Anthropocene, while the work of Hart speaks to the precariousness and complexities of identity in this posthuman era. These contemporary terms of Anthropocene and Posthumanism are entwined through social, theoretical and lived experiences. This group of artists bring these issues to the forefront in their work. In a strong visual and contextual conversation these artists discuss the sustainable and the fleeting through replication and regeneration informed by their individual research into contemporary philosophy, ecological theory, and identity politics.
The text for my component of the show:
Mark Roth’s paintings find inspiration in the cryptozoological artifact of blobsquatches – a blobsquatch being the indeterminate blob in a photograph that a keen-eyed observer ascertains is a visual capture of Sasquatch. Generally they take the form of forest views with a circle drawing one’s attention to the purported creature. Roth contends the resilience of Bigfoot speaks to the persistent yearning to see primeval nature staring back at us in a form analogous to our own. In a blobsquatch the circling line is the essential component for it represents the culmination of careful scrutiny and an urgency to share the benefits of passionate looking. In these works the artist has made it his quest to locate evidence of Sasquatch in the paintings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The encircling line repeats so that the composition assumes a target shape, utilizing the notion that the bullseye represents an apogee of yearning – in this case to strike a connection with primordial painters in the wilderness of art and its making.
Tinsquo’s curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Resonant Gestures: Paintings by Sarah Hombach, Alexis Ayala and Mark Roth.
A writer, Sarah Hombach has recently plunged into painting as a means to explore arenas of experience where the insufficiency of words can be glaring. Compelled by the language of gesture, the figures that populate Sarah’s work represent “a means of embodying a certain feeling or interpersonal phenomena.” Because they are depicted from an emotional standpoint, representing “how the body is experienced from the inside,” the figures are liberated to inhabit impossible anatomies and express themselves in potentially fantastic gestures. Influenced by Medieval art and its emphasis on frontality, Hombach explores awkwardness and the inability of people to occupy the idealized position many painters put them in. This concern arises out of the experience of her particular body and perceived sense of strangeness. In this way her painting practice functions as a tool of self-acceptance for herself and the viewer, proffering the vision of “a joyful exalted awkward person.”
Artist Alexis Ayala’s paintings are respectfully informed by the values of graffiti that inspired him during his formative years growing up on the West Coast. Lex’s aesthetic is grounded in a love for streetwear and fashion along with his Mexican heritage. Ayala’s studio practice is one of developing intimately meaningful iconography that is resonant to streetwear’s strategy of reshuffling cultural signifiers. These new works represent a straddling between typography and easel painting’s concerns, stretching to embrace inclusion of brushy gesture and depictions of illusionistic depth. Hands, apples, eyes, cigarettes and letters comprise an expanding universe and grammar of the artist’s narrative. By bridging graphic portrayal and painterly expression, the work fuses the dual strains of typography and Abstract Expressionism – doing so with a bit of sign painter’s labor thrown in to acknowledge and embody the virtue of craft.
Mark Roth’s newest paintings find inspiration in the cryptozoological artifact of blobsquatches – a blobsquatch being the indeterminate blob in a photograph that a keen-eyed observer ascertains is a visual capture of Sasquatch. Generally they take the form of forest views with a circle drawing one’s attention to the purported creature. Roth states:
“I find the resilience of Bigfoot to be compelling. I believe it speaks to the persistent yearning to see primordial nature staring back at us in a form analogous to our own. I love the thought of a person scouring photographs to verify that the world still contains the unknown awaiting discovery. It’s the yearning of blobsquatches that I find so moving. For me this is encapsulated not so much in the blurry purported Sasquatch but in the encircling line drawing attention to the creature. The circle is the essential component of the blobsquatch for it represents the culmination of careful scrutiny and an urgency to share the benefits of passionate looking. So, with this as inspiration, I dedicated myself to the search for evidence of Sasquatch in the paintings of The Met.”
Included here are faithfully replicated passages from Dosso Dossi and Balthus that incontrovertibly capture a Sasquatch “tree peak” and a striding Squatch in a posture akin to that of frame 352 in the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film of 1967. The encircling line repeats so that the composition assumes a target shape, utilizing the notion that the bullseye represents an apogee of yearning - in this case, to strike a connection with primordial painters in the wilderness of art and its making.
Resonant Gestures: Paintings by Sarah Hombach, Alexis Ayala and Mark Roth runs through September 28 and is on view at the Adjacent to Life pop-up gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City). Artists' Reception: Tuesday, September 11, 8:00-10:00pm.
This painting is a tribute to the 13 birds who represent that bottleneck.
In conjunction with Ryan John Lee’s exhibit, Soul of a City, it will be offered for auction with proceeds going to the Loisaida Center and hurricane relief.
Opening: January 19, 6-8:30 pm. Loisaida Center, 710 East 9th Street, NYC.
From the gallery press release:
The Phatory is pleased to announce an evening of conversation with CUNY professor Jeffrey Bussolini, and artist Mark Roth on the occasion of Roth’s exhibition, Tumbleweeds, on Friday, April 7 at 7:00 pm. Following the discussion the evening continues with a dj set courtesy of producer Nick Hook.
Jeffrey Bussolini is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at CUNY College of Staten Island. A sociologist, philosopher, and historian of technology by training, his areas of inquiry are: ailourography (etho-ethnography), ethnography of national security institutions, ancient and contemporary philosophy (including presocratics and critical philosophies of violence, war, and state power), and television studies. He has conducted ethnographic and historical study of Los Alamos and related nuclear security sites since 1991 and etho-ethnographic study of feline-human interactions since 1995.
Mark Roth is a graduate of the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roth currently has an augmented reality installation, Missing The Megafauna, situated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His previous series Grazer’s Gaze: The Grass Paintings has been published in the University of Oxford’s Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities.
Nick Hook is a dj and music producer. He is fresh off a 2 month North American tour where he opened for Run The Jewels. His most recent album, Relationships, was released in November on the Fool’s Gold label.
The Tumbleweeds exhibit has been extended to May 1.
From the gallery press release:
The Phatory is pleased to present Tumbleweeds an installation of works by Mark Roth. The exhibition opens March 18th and will run through April 15th, with an artist reception held on Saturday, March 18, between 6 and 8:00 p.m.
The Tumbleweed – or Russian Thistle – is an immigrant from Eurasia. It initially hopped a ride in a flax seed shipment to South Dakota in 1877 and proceeded to become an essential symbol of the American West. In an exploration of the tumbleweed as an icon, metaphor and dynamic formal structure, Roth fills the gallery with 147 paintings that find the diaspore bounding along multiple lines of flight. Representing a four-year painterly inquiry and narrative, the tumbleweeds roll through Modernism with spinning vortexes exploring collage, compositional concerns, megafaunal extinction, cave painting, nostalgia, structural collapse and the enchantment of the natural world.
A graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roth currently has an augmented reality installation, Missing The Megafauna, situated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His previous series Grazer’s Gaze: The Grass Paintings has been published in the University of Oxford’s Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities.
A selection of paintings from the Missing The Megafauna series are included in the Emergent Ecologies exhibit at Kilroy (283 Greene Ave) in Brooklyn. The show opens April 30 and runs through May 22 with a full slate of performances, discussions and film screenings on the weekends.
Picasso is said to have explained that he’d sometimes leave a painting unfinished in the corner of the studio. Weeks, months or even years later, he’d unearth that canvas to discover it magically resolved, as if on its own.
The paintings displayed here reflect a similar dynamic. While I’ve always considered them resolved, a critical transformation has occurred during the many years since they were archived in my studio.
This aesthetic alchemy is driven by a multi-fold mechanism. Partly, the works stand as irreproducible relics of an aspirant artist in the thrall of the New York School painters. The doors to that former self now closed, they also retroactively connect-the-dots to subsequent evolution.
Picasso might have considered this art of recovery the aesthetics of self-compassion - increased self-acceptance on the part of the painter leads to a tempered critical eye. Could Picasso’s tale have been a wink and nod to the retrospective gaze as another tool at the artist’s disposal?
In Retrospect: Paintings by Mark Roth runs through April 4 at the Adjacent to Life pop-up gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B).
Assemblage composed of works from the Tornado, Mountain, Geyser, Grass, Plank-Lever, Pop Stoppage and Portrayal series. Exhibited as part of Transart Institute's MFA program. Supermarkt, Berlin Germany.
This is the final weekend to catch Dormancy Quota Exceeded: Plank-Lever Series at Michael Mut Gallery.
Thanks to everyone who's turned out, encouraged and provided insights this time around. It's been a great run! Particular gratitude extended to new collectors and old friends, to Luiza and Oylun and especially to Michael, for creating the opportunity.
What are doing Friday night? I'm excited about my Plank-Lever show opening at Michael Mut Gallery - 97 Ave C (between 6 and 7th Streets). See you there!
This is the final weekend for Superheated Reservoirs: Geysers and Fingertraps. Thanks to all who attended, offered encouragement, provided insights and otherwise proved instrumental in making the show a success. Particular gratitude extended to Sally Lelong, Nick Hook, Janna Olson and my exhibition cohort, Aaron Cardella.
One of the most thrilling moments of the show's run was a visit by a pair of the freshest eyes imaginable - a guest who literally was not yet a full day old. She was attracted, no doubt, by the exhibit's powerful buzz.
Superheated Reservoirs: Geysers and Fingertraps an exhibition of works by Mark Roth and Aaron Cardella concludes at The Phatory, Saturday and Sunday 1-8:00.
This Friday is shaping up to be worthy of the iconic East Village - small gallery, local artists, the community turning out to support their own. Thanks. Aaron Cardella, Nick Hook and I really appreciate it. Btw, special props to Nick for spinning at our show straight back from his London tour.
Mystery Lure: The gallery’s wallpaper is the punchline to this show’s title.
Opening Reception - The Phatory, 618 East 9th Street (between Avenues B and C), Friday, February 4, 7-9 pm.
Show - February 5 - March 27, 2011
Gallery Hours -
Sat. & Sun., 1 - 8pm
Other Times by appointment
Huge thanks to Cubic Zirconia and Nick Hook for a great Tribeca pop-up show! Tuesday night just over 200 people funneled into Damon Dash's DD172 gallery/performance space which, tonight, is host to the launch of "Joyride," the 10th Anniversary Bicycle Film Festival.
CZ tore it up down under while the art above ground peaked the atmospheric charge - Julian Gilbert's photos from the road, Ulysses Pizarro's Inner City Avant Garde street art and TINSQUO's own Joan of Arc Riding My Little Pony debuting with the 7-month Tornado Series. Everybody pulsing to Vin Sol beats and the gale force, live debut of Black & Blue navigated the aftermath with dizzied smiles.
Props, too, to Sammy for tech assistance and general coolness.
Hear CZ on iTunes! See more snaps at this feature on HiFiCARTEL!
Tuesday night, come to a one night Pop-Up Event at hip-hop mogul Damon Dash’s new space, The Dash Gallery. You'll see all of the new Tornado Series – 154 paintings in a process assemblage - and hear a "4-headed genre-defying [vibe] monster bred in NYC’s lower east side," Cubic Zirconia - LIVE.
We're celebrating the release of Cubic Zirconia’s new single Black and Blue – for which I provided cover design: Tornadoes, of course.
Also on view: Joan of Arc Riding My Little Pony
Specifics:
Tuesday, June 15 7-11pm
The Dash Gallery
172 Duane St., Tribeca
Door: $10 - drink, snack, music, art, video
RSVP:
cubiczirconiaband@gmail.com
Tuesday night, come to a one night Pop-Up Event at hip-hop mogul Damon Dash’s new space, The Dash Gallery. You'll see all of the new Tornado Series – 154 paintings in a process assemblage - and hear a "4-headed genre-defying [vibe] monster bred in NYC’s lower east side," Cubic Zirconia - LIVE.
We're celebrating the release of Cubic Zirconia’s new single Black and Blue – for which I provided cover design: Tornadoes, of course.
Also on view: Joan of Arc Riding My Little Pony
Specifics:
Tuesday, June 15 7-11pm
The Dash Gallery
172 Duane St., Tribeca
Door: $10 - drink, snack, music, art, video
RSVP:
cubiczirconiaband@gmail.com
Currently, to my delight, I've installed a mural-sized assemblage of Pop Stoppages at Green Spaces in Tribeca. Structured as a place where social change happens, Green Spaces is an incubator for sustainability-minded entrepreneurs, providing office space to green startups and a hub for visionary exchange.
The Pop Stoppages were born of a desire to construct works in an environmentally neutral manner – upcycling refuse into art. In recognition of the Green Space venue, the installation embarks on an expansion of this idea into a process project called Net-Zero Art.
The assemblage aims to be sustainably constructed; it is as chemically benign at the end of its lifecycle as is manageable in this transitional moment. For example, the wood support is a salvaged piece of molding from Build It Green (Yes, I carried an eleven foot long board on the subway from Astoria), the vellum support is 100% natural fiber and no adhesive is used to attach the individual works. They are held in place by small slits cut in the vellum. Even the acrylic paint is ‘fixed’, effectively sequestered, in the work.
The yet-undiscovered prize in my quest to attain Net-Zero Art remains an eco-acetate to protect the entire construction. (We were able to source chemically benign deicing pellets but not clear film rolls). Fortunately, it – and the whole construction – is reusable.
In celebration of this work, Green Spaces and I will be hosting a Chill Night on April 21 – 6:30 - 8:30pm – to contemplate the possibilities of the moment and to change the way you think of 2-liter soda bottles for evermore. Consider yourself invited! Please stop by.
Green Spaces is located at 394 Broadway 5th floor between White and Walker. Ring the buzzer.
Thanks to Annie Powers for her photo. She’s a Brooklyn-based photographer who’s available to document art and does a great job with humans, too. Check out her Out and About series.
Someday art will be currency and money really will grow on trees.
This month Art In A Box – an organization dedicated to delivering art supplies and programs to children in disrupted regions of the world – is collaborating with Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts to stage a benefit exhibition and online sale. It continues through Dec. 24th.
The regenerative energy of human creativity remains one of our great underutilized resources – its potential is unlimited in a world of dwindling natural capital. No doubt, children represent the purest form of creative experience.
Spread the gift of art by visiting Art In A Box for collectable works at a reasonable price – including my offering, pictured above – with a huge return on investment via the youngest, most essential artists in our human tribe.
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