Scott Miller Projects is excited to present Tight Fit, a presentation of new paintings by artist Richard Roth. Tight Fit will be the gallery’s inaugural exhibition at its new space located at the Mercantile on Morris building in Birmingham, Alabama. Roth began his career as an artist in the late 1960s, after receiving his BFA from The Cooper Union and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Roth’s iconic three-dimensional box paintings pack an optical punch that uniquely invites the viewer to interact with them. One must move around the works to understand and fully experience the visual games that Roth is playing. Art Historian, Robert Hobbs, describes Roth’s recent paintings as “constructivist in outlook, with great attention paid to their overall painted surfaces, including their four pronounced sides. Viewed as a group, they comprise collections of objects and also appear to encompass secretive contents within their box-like confines. Roth’s package paintings thus deliver a wallop far bigger than their size, since their prominent depth, thoughtfully deliberated concision, and overall arresting design transform painting into a volumetric container, whose mysterious inside belies its meticulously articulated and accessible exterior.”₁ Roth’s hard edge paintings bring to mind the minimalist works of Jo Baer and Anne Truitt while also providing a glimpse back to the Op Art of the 1960s. They would have been comfortably at home in William C. Seitz’s 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art where “a new relationship was established between the observer and the work of art.”₂

 

“…your mind has to move a lot more fluidly and flexibly and multi-directionally if you’re going to come to terms with the confounding complexity of Roth’s deviously generous works.”

– David Pagel, from essay on Chromatic,
a group exhibition at the Bentley Gallery,
April, 2021

 
Richard Roth is an artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 1991 he was the recipient of a Visual Artists Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and a BFA from The Cooper Union. His work has been exhibited at the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Margaret Thatcher Projects, NY; David Richard Contemporary, NY and Santa Fe, NM; Valletta Contemporary, Malta; Galerie Rob de Vries, The Netherlands; HICA, Highland Institute of Contemporary Art, Loch Ruthven, Scotland; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; Rocket Gallery, London; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; UCR/California Museum of Photography; the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan; Feigen, Inc., Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; OK Harris Gallery, NY; Castelli Warehouse, NY. He is the co-editor of the book, Beauty is Nowhere: Ethical Issues in Art and Design and co-author of two books – Color Basics and Design Basics 3D. His debut novel, NoLab, was published November 2019 by Owl Canyon Press. His work was included in the book, 100 Painters of Tomorrow, Thames and Hudson, 2014. Roth was the Director of Solvent Space in Richmond, Virginia, 2005 – 2009. He was a faculty member in the Painting and Printmaking Department at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1999 – 2015; he chaired the Department from 1999 – 2008. He has also taught at The Ohio State University, Columbus; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design – University of Central England; and the University of California, Berkeley. Richard Roth presently lives and works in Camarillo, California.

Roth was the Director of Solvent Space in Richmond, Virginia, 2005 – 2009. He was a faculty member in the Painting and Printmaking Department at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1999 – 2015; he chaired the Department from 1999 – 2008. He has also taught at The Ohio State University, Columbus; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design – University of Central England; and the University of California, Berkeley. Richard Roth presently lives and works in Camarillo, California.

 

Roth’s work embodies a dandyish formalism. Each work is woven out of cultural and spatial games.

Each work is a beautifully crafted object, yet craftsmanship is employed to create objects that are immaterial – purely speculative. Roth’s work evokes Fluxus’ sense of play, yet inflected with a dandy’s urbanity. 

Richard Roth’s work makes me think of the cool jazz of the 60s with its cerebral twists and turns, formed out of unexpected reinterpretations of the old standards.₃

– Peter Halley

1 Richard Roth: Under the Influence: New Paintings and Early Work (Richmond, VA: Reynolds Gallery, 2012), 14.
2 “The Responsive Eye.” New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964. The Museum of Modern Art
3 Richard Roth: Under the Influence: New Paintings and Early Work (Richmond, VA: Reynolds Gallery, 2012), 8.