Details:

This work depicts a leaning figure with her ear pressed lightly against a wall, and her hands on either side to maintain balance. The figure casts a shadow, slowly drawing the viewer's attention to a hand resting lightly on the back of a sofa.
Framed: 32.4 x 24.2 x 1.5 in.
Signed

① Artwork:

Eavesdropper

This work depicts a leaning figure with her ear pressed lightly against a wall, and her hands on either side to maintain balance. The figure casts a shadow, slowly drawing the viewer's attention to a hand resting lightly on the back of a sofa. The transparent hand is a view into what lies just behind the wall. This work is part of a larger series exploring the duplex as an architectural place as well as a conceptual framework. Each composition features transparency, permeability, broken boundaries and unusual or impossible views. 

Samantha Roth’s drawings are at once familiar, strange and highly detailed. The artist's works seduce the viewer with diaphanous layers of carefully applied colored pencil over a darkly painted ground. The artist’s meticulously rendered scenes frequently depict interior spaces, bodies in motion and mundane tasks. However, these recognizable spaces, figures and events are depicted in such a way as to make the ordinary seem unusual. For Roth, the impulse to mine daily experience is a way to harness her anxious and observant mind—capturing details and interactions that seem worth turning over again and again.

Specs:

22.5 inches
29.5 inches
with frame
24.25 inches
32.38 inches
1.5 inches
32.38 inches

③ Artist:

Samantha Roth

Samantha Roth’s drawings are at once familiar, strange and highly detailed, seducing the viewer with diaphanous layers of carefully applied color pencil over dark painted ground. The artist’s meticulously rendered scenes traverse common ground–an interior space, a body in motion, a small task–but these recognizable events are depicted in such a way as to make the ordinary seem unusual. For Roth, the impulse to mine daily experience is a way to harness her anxious and observant mind, capturing details and interactions that seem worth turning over again and again.

BIO:

Samantha Roth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1981. The artist received an MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Duplex, took place at Tyler Park Presents in Los Angeles, California. The show was selected as a Critics’ Pick Review in Artforum

Group exhibitions that have shown Roth’s work have taken place at: Jancar Jones in Los Angeles, California; Pepin Moore in Los Angeles, California; Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles, California; Human Resources in Los Angeles, California; AWHRHWAR in Los Angeles, California; Harkawik in New York City; and La Loma Projects in Los Angeles, California. 

Roth lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Samantha Roth:
Eavesdropper, 2021
Paper, black gesso, colored pencils
29.5 × 22.5 inches /