Victoria Roth at Brennan & Griffin

Artist: Victoria Roth

Exhibition title: Off the Banks

Venue: Brennan & Griffin, New York, US

Date: January 29 – February 26, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Brennan & Griffin, New York

Brennan & Griffin is pleased to present “Off the Banks,” an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Brooklyn based artist Victoria Roth. The works in the exhibition use Marsden Hartley’s stormy and majestic “Seascape” paintings of the mid 30’s to 40’s as a point of reference, culling from their unabashed drama and scopic connection of viewer to picture.

Roth’s paintings are environments in which marks and gestures, addition and subtraction all collide to create an intimate painterly expanse inhabited by and crowded with elements that evoke the body. These paintings embody an intense sense of physicality: the muscular energy of the forms, the all-over movement of the imagery and its mark-making press against the edges of the frame. Roth’s painterly process involves the constant accrual and removal of thin layers of oil paint to embed the surface with a rich luminescence. The finished works retain a fuzzy grain and diluted soft edges as Roth scrapes, erases, and sands the surface of the canvas. This softness is counterbalanced by defined outlines and stark markings, allowing for a graphic sensibility to emerge.

In empty space
where entrails entwine
with the cerebral
blossom,
I cast myself to stones,
they caught me
and ringed a sphere
with what I became.

(Paul Célan, from “Force of Light”, 1970)

Victoria Roth (b. 1986 Paris, France) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA from Brown University in 2008 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2014. Recent group exhibitions include The Clear and the Obscure, Lulu, Mexico City, MX (2016), In the Mix, Hometown Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2016), Vivid Bra, New York, NY (2016), SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY (2016). Roth was an artist in residence at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residency in Brooklyn, NY in 2015-2016.