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Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Spines by Mark Roth and Leon Brown. Marisa Malone contributes the exhibition essay:
I imagine going through artist and curator Mark Roth’s sketchbooks as something akin to an excavation, an archaeological dig through decades worth of material. Writer Leon Brown can attest it’s much more intuitive than that. At Adjacent to Life Gallery is the collaborative show Spines, featuring text by Brown paired with selections of Roth’s archive, on view from June 9th-July 14th.
Roth’s sketchbooks are dynamic in their function, “there's a diaristic aspect, there's free drawing, there’s collage, there's all sorts of permutations of how I use them,” Roth explains. One hundred and thirty sketchbooks in total, Brown and Roth went through all of them, selecting at first instinct which pages to show and narrowing it down to twelve books. “If we thought about it too hard,” Brown says, “we might have not done it.” They chose to avoid taking too critical an approach by simply asking themselves “what do we like?”
Through this process a dialogue formed between the text and the artwork. Brown’s distilled evocations bring us into a moment in time that’s been captured in Roth's sketchbooks, tying in themes that are present, not just within the pages on view, but within the books as a whole. “I like that all the information that is concealed or behind the scenes is relevant,” Roth says. The spaciousness of the text, both visually and narratively, in conjunction with Roth’s images, allows us to enter into these scenes, letting us feel what they are like rather than be told. “The test for these things is people's enjoyment of it and if they get an experience from it,” Brown says, “and also whether or not each of the contributions inhabit one another and I think they do. In my mind now they’re inseparable.”
Brown’s writing is sensitive to the images, colors, and energy in Roth’s work. “The love and attention has been put into trying to speak to the art and, where possible, contribute to what Mark’s captured,” says Brown, “the shape and the form of the words on the page are designed to be as sympathetic to the artwork as possible.” One of Brown’s strategies for this was to refrain from naming any colors. “The color field ones are particularly interesting,” notes Roth, “because in a way any one can work but it changes everything.”
Within this collaboration is a clear appreciation for one another's work and trust given to the process. “The idea hasn't needed to go through a number of different conceptions, we just did what we said we were going to do and it’s been a wonderful experience,” says Brown. “The generosity of Mark to give us access to his archive is extraordinary and I’m really grateful for that. It’s a privilege to be part of the reason to show it and get it out there.” The privilege is extended to us to not only get a glimpse into Roth’s impressive catalog but, through Brown’s granular sense of language, inhabit a world it helped inspire.
- Marisa Malone
Marisa Malone grew up in the Sierra foothills of Nevada. She studied writing and literature at The Evergreen State College and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has been published in BlazeVox Journal and Selfish Magazine, along with two self-published poetry chapbooks.
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Spines is on view through July 14, 2023 at the Adjacent To Life gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City). Opening reception: Tuesday, June 20, 7:00 - 9:00.
