For Art Rotterdam 2023 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a solo exhibition with new works by Austrian artist David Roth (1985).
Is a painting a painting if it’s not made with a paintbrush? David Roth makes a convincing case that the answer is yes. In an ongoing series of large scale works titled “Flower Paintings,” the artist uses bundles of flowers (ranging from sunflowers bought at the local market to wildflowers scavenged on the side of the highway) as paintbrushes, creating bold and powerful, large-scale, abstract works which excite and mystify. In doing so, Roth asserts that perhaps the accepted parameters of what constitutes a “painting” – how a painting is made and categorized – need be explored, challenged, and expanded.
Many of his smaller paintings are dated with quite long time frames, 2010-2022 or 2015-2022 for example. Roth has no rules for when a painting is finished. As he mainly uses oil paint which needs time to dry, he usually works on several different canvases at the same time over a period of several months. Then he puts them away, to let them breathe and dry. After he left them alone for a while he looks at them again with a fresh eye, to decide what to do. Sometimes a work indeed turns out to be finished, more often it needs more work or a new start. For Roth it is like being in love: you work on a piece and you feel like you absolutely love it. But at some point you need to take a step back, let it rest for a while, to see if it was not just a crush, but whether you are actually in love.
David Roth (1985) graduated from the Academy of fine arts Vienna in the class of Daniel Richter. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include ‘Method Acting’ at Galeria Alegria in Barcelona, ‘Imagine’ at Bildraum 01 in Vienna, ’An introduction to painting’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘remember’ at New Jörg in Vienna, ‘Vogl/Roth’ at Skulpturinstitut in Vienna, ‘ça grésille, ça clignotte’ at le commissariat in Paris and ‘Orgy Now’ at Ve.sch in Vienna. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Stretch Release’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘Vielfalt’ at Landesmuseum Burgenland, ‘Imago Mundi’ at Belvedere Winterpalais in Vienna and ‘Plus jamais seul’ at Standards in Rennes. Work by Roth is held in private and public collections including the Landesmuseum Burgenland, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, the Aksenov Family Foundation and the Luciano Benetton collection. David Roth lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
From 19 March until 20 August 2023 David Roth’s work will be shown in the group exhibition ‘Landscapes’ at Museum Schloss Moyland in Germany.
