{enter gallery above} I believe in dichotomies: the internal world and the external realm. Micro and macro. I believe in a separation between what is revealed by the light and what remains hidden in the dark. More than that primary belief, I have faith in the battle between polarities: Like when private life opposes public life and when the darkness devours the light of everything good in life that has been lived. For centuries, thinkers have conceptualized and found meaning in the world on account of these dichotomies. Thinkers have erected statues and names and places and legacies based on those battles between opposites. If a hero needs anything, he needs something to fight. Battle. Lose, then: Win. In the same way that we have carried ideas from our grandfather histories, I believe that we also carry things from our single, solitary lives – we carry things from childhood to adulthood. And on that journey we peer inside to make sense of the world outside. And in trying to understand who we are and why and how we are – we use the external world as a template for understanding, for us: the meaning-making machines. Brandon Roth lost something bigger than him when he was thirteen: his father. While I have no idea how tall Roth’s father was, or how big he is now in his dreamy sleep – the imbroglio that constitutes this loss in his heart and head is gigantic. But Brandon Roth didn’t tell me that. Really, he wouldn’t tell me that. But, he also didn’t need to. In the way that his life has a voice of its own that doesn’t sound as shy and introverted as Roth is for the most part: His work speaks for its self. Loudly. Molecular, physical, geometric, organic shapes and lines take precedence in Roth’s paintings. His work speaks to the messy organization that the natural world provides: Inside and Out. Roth’s work is an essay on the internal machine in every organism. There is a violence in his paint brush’s stroke – there is commentary on the struggle between making sense between what’s inside and what’s out there beneath all of those fiery, beautiful, silent stars and uncountable explosions in the night. Roth’s work is a meditation on everything tiny and molecular that makes-up everything so much bigger than me and you and even the death of each of our fathers. His work is a magnifying glass for the abstract struggle Roth himself has been undergoing since his childhood. The ink is a runny river of coming-to-know. Coming-of-age. His work is about blood and cells and matter and the miniscule being overshadowed by the gigantic, the monstrous. Since he was a child, Brandon Roth has spent a lot of time walking. He is a night wanderer. He likes to set-out and take-in information and look at the world around him. What exactly happens during these walks, I’m not entirely certain, but I do understand the quiet kind of desperation that sets-in whilst walking, silently, invisible in the world. And this is what I believe happens for Roth: that deeper kind of introspection. The passive kind. The kind that doesn’t leave you much choice about your participation. Like his work and his walks, Brandon Roth’s formulations about who he is, where he came from and where he is to go are a bit mysterious. For now he is in school. He is heading the way of graphic design. In a strange twist of personal meaning: He wants to create identities. Corporate identities. He has created work for the Flobots project, his band, The Still City’s albums and tee-shirts. He has also created looks for dispensaries and other local companies. But one of the more profound angles that Roth has taken is in what he leaves all over those same streets of Denver (see gallery for images) that he so often wanders through, around and within. One part retaliation for the flat street art he was finding all around the Queen City, Roth decided to give some literal shape and dimension to his conception of eye candy on the street. More than that, he pulled the idea of the dispensability of art out the dumpster and won it for himself. Using cardboard, glue, paint, plastic and whatever else that makes sense – he began building, breathing life into and then leaving monsters around town: on top of buildings, dangling on the sides of businesses. Standing no chance against the Colorado weather – the importance never was on longevity, but rather, the life that is infused into the project by just that one person glimpsing the creatures while they’re waiting for a light. Or that one girl riding her bicycle down the street at lunchtime. Or that midnight rambler stumbling out of a bar in the middle of the night. For his first show, Roth hung his paintings in the show space, as custom dictates. However, he melded his two worlds together: His cellular work, with its infinitesimal lines, all pointed out the door to the patio space where he hung creatures that correlated. Micro/macro. Internal world/external world. Inside/outside. Up/down. Search/discovery. Where all the dichotomies in this world are locked in an unending battle, they are also yoked together in the continuum of life that is grayscale. For there is no separation between opposites. At some point all things dance elegantly together. It is in this place where I believe Brandon Roth to be: walking through the night, creating meaning out of his life to share with the rest of us. Remain in-touch with the noctivagant Roth: www.rothworks.wordpress.com. |