Martin Roth (artist)

Martin Roth (October 2, 1977 in Graz – June 14, 2019 in New York City[1]) was an Austrian artist living and working in New York City, USA after earning a master's degree from Hunter College in 2011.

Work

Much of Roth's work revolved around the introduction of living organisms into a setting or situation circumscribed by the artist. He used living organisms as a stand in for humans, to show that they're also characters caught in conditions where they don't have control."[2][3][4][3] His work, while frequently ephemeral or temporary,[3] is saturated in space.[5][4] On one level, there is the physical dimension of spaces large,[6] and small: from the quaint miniature landscapes or rocks and plants inside glass cages,[3][7] housing lizards[8] or mice[9] to the compact grid of a lavender field[10][11][12][13] shaped by the artist's arrangement in a white cube; from the beautiful patterned garden of Persian rugs sprouting verdant grass,[2][11][14] or the tepid lagoon created by flooding a gallery space,[5][15][16] to the thrust of a cherry sapling through a laminate surface,[3][17] demonstrating the interplay between an exposed space above and subterranean space[18][19] below that characterizes several of Roth's installations.[6] These physical settings often interweave with or generate acoustic spaces[20][21][16] to create the conditions for – and are, in turn, shaped by – the natural organism that inhabit them.[3][15] His work can be large-scale and particular to a site,[3][10][9] the fact that it requires the nurture[22] of living organisms[3][13] renders it strangely intimate and invites the viewer if not to engage directly,[23][16] at least to consider his or her relationship to the work on a human scale.[24][3] Roth interrogated the increasingly blurry line between human and nonhuman systems.[25]

References

1. Martin Roth
2. "Transforming ancient carpets into gardens". 11 October 2016.
3. "Martin Roth on Collaborating with Nature". thecreativeindependent.com.
4. "Live Parakeets and Bullfrogs Amid the Wreckage of War". 12 October 2015.
5. "Martin Roth Populates a War Zone With Parakeets and Bullfrogs at Louis B. James". 8 October 2015 – via NYTimes.com.
6. "MARTIN ROTH: In May 2017 I cultivated a piece of land in Midtown Manhattan nurtured by tweets". The Brooklyn Rail.
7. Fuse, Arte (26 April 2018). "Martin Roth: I collected a plant from the garden of a mass shooter at Yours Mine and Ours Gallery".
8. "Martin Roth". The New Yorker.
9. "Q - Martin Roth's latest installation uses Trump's Twitter account is cultivating a lavender field".
10. "Künstler züchtet Lavendel in New York - Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben". www.monopol-magazin.de.
11. "An Artist Is Growing a Garden Using Tweets from Trump, Fox, and CNN". 8 May 2017.
12. The Editors of ARTnews (6 June 2017). "Morning Links: Frank Lloyd Wright's 150th Birthday Edition".
13. "Donald Trump's Tweets Make Lavender Plants Bloom in Austrian Artist Martin Roth's Latest Installation - Architectural Digest".
14. Ferraioli, Mariacristina (12 June 2017). "Martin Roth a New York con un'opera anti-Trump - Artribune".
15. "Artist Fills Gallery with Rescued Animals and Debris from Syria". 16 September 2015.
16. "VIDEO: Martin Roth Fills L.E.S. Gallery with Debris (and Birds) - Artinfo".
17. "MAKE.A.MATCH - Reto Steiner, Martin Roth - Sublet: Begegnungen die Früchte tragen". www.artmagazine.cc.
18. "Martin Roth". Widewalls.
19. Durón, Maximilíano (18 December 2015). "Martin Roth at Louis B. James".
20. "Martin Roth". The New Yorker.
21. "The Artist's Institute. Temporada 8: Pierre Huyghe – A*Desk". 14 July 2014.
22. Gittlen, Ariela (14 March 2018). "Why This Artist Is Growing Desert Plants to Question U.S. Gun Policies".
23. "Installation Can Be Felt Underfoot - ArtSlant". ArtSlant.
24. CTV News (7 June 2017). "Presidential power: Lavender garden nurtured by Trump tweets" – via YouTube.
25. "Martin Roth at yours mine & ours". www.artforum.com.

External links

• Roth's official website