WHAT MY HANDS KNOW | Arti et Amicitiae | 21. January

Benjamin Roth is an abstract painter who uses geometric compositions that are independent of narrative and connotative interpretations. An orderly array of lines, rhomboids, circles and squares relate to each other precisely and apparently without chance. As a painter he is concerned with, among other things, the construction of a painting. The material plays a directive role. Roth encounters this material everywhere: in his studio, during walks, in hardware stores and in shops for artists’ supplies. Roth lets these materials guide him and shows his true nature as a painter by opting for the right form of treatment for a material.

He sands, rotates, cuts out and fills in, as much or as little as is necessary to arrive at new succinct compositions.

The installation twice in the exhibition consists of a double curved wall which functions as a carrier for two almost ‘identical’ paintings.

I teach my hands to cope with any other idea. A process which in return needs my idea to cope with hands’ gained knowledge. After such a battle over control-lost-control, a work should finish transcending the idea, leaving me rather baffled. All necessary efforts not to do the same thing twice.