Martin Roth

The Austrian artist Martin Roth (1977-2019) attracted attention with site-specific installations and interventions between art and nature. His ephemeral and temporary spaces, mostly apocalyptic-dystopic scenarios of rubble, bricks, or civilization waste, were literally animated with rescued animals (frogs, birds, snails, laboratory mice, etc.) and/or plants - on the one hand these act as catalysts together with the factor time for the decay of place and material. At the same time they are a promise for renewal and continuity of at least nature and matter.

For the installation at KUNST HAUS WIEN, the artist has filled the entire floor of the "garage" with rubble and sculptural pieces - wild plants settle in the gaps - and stimulates the setting with a sound installation: The main sounds are birds that imitate technically produced sounds such as ring tones, car noise, sirens, etc. - an echo of our industrialized life. Roth has taken up themes of dislocation, substitution, decay, inequality and disorder in a network of relationships between artist / recipient, human / animal / nature and time / space and created subtle symbolic images of the state of our world. In october 2019 I listened to animals imitating humans. is his first museum exhibition in Austria, which the artist conceived this spring before his early, unexpected death in his adopted home New York.

Curator: Margareta Sandhofer

#KHWMartinRoth
#GreenMuseum
#KUNSTHAUSWIEN

EXHIBITION PROGRAMME

09.01.20,  p.m.

Guided tour with Margareta Sandhofer