Landscapes series

Photo by Alexandre Alloul
  • Deep Fields , Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris, 2026
Courtesy of the Meixihu Contemporary Art Museum
  • Landscapes, Meixihu Contemporary Art Museum, 2025, Changsha, China
Photo courtesy Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art
  • Landscapes , Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Zhejiang Art Museum, Oct. 18 - Dec. 11, 2022, Hangzhou, China
  • Landscapes , A LEAP INTO THE VOID. ART BEYOND MATTER, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, February 3 - May 28, 2023, Bergamo, Italy
Photo by Joshua Citarella, courtesy Carroll/Fletcher
  • Carroll/Fletcher at the Armory Show 2017 , Platform: Evan Roth, March 2 - March 5, 2017, New York City
Wavelength, A Momentary Spring, Chengdu, China
Times Art Museum, A Momentary Spring, Beijing, China
Photo by Bruno Lopes
  • Red Lines with Landscapes: Portugal (Lisbon) , Fidelidade Arte, January 31 - May 22, 2020, Lisbon
Photo by Gerhard Kassner
  • Songs of the Sky: Photography & the Cloud (Arles) , Rencontres d’Arles, July 4 - September 25, 2022, Arles, France
Photo by Vinciane Lebrun-Verguethen, courtesy of the Mona Bismarck American Center
  • Landscape with a Ruin , Mona Bismarck American Center, October 20 - November 10, 2017, Paris
Photo by Vinciane Lebrun-Verguethen, courtesy of the Mona Bismarck American Center
  • Landscape with a Ruin , Mona Bismarck American Center, October 20 - November 10, 2017, Paris
Photo by Vinciane Lebrun-Verguethen, courtesy of the Mona Bismarck American Center
  • Landscape with a Ruin , Mona Bismarck American Center, October 20 - November 10, 2017, Paris
Photo by Alexandre Delmar
  • Red Lines with Landscapes: Portugal (Porto) , Culturgest do Porto, October 3 - December 6, 2020, Porto
Photo by Alexandre Delmar
  • Red Lines with Landscapes: Portugal (Porto) , Culturgest do Porto, October 3 - December 6, 2020, Porto
Photo by Paolo Rolando Guerzoni, courtesy of Fondazione Modena Arti Visive
  • Landscapes , Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Mondi distorti, Modena, Italy, 2023
Songs of the Sky, Photography & The Cloud, C/O Berlin, 2021, Installation view © C/O Berlin Foundation, David von Becker
  • Songs of the Sky: Photography & the Cloud , C|O Berlin, Berlin, Germany, December 11, 2021 – April 21, 2022
Photos courtesy Yuz Museum
  • Lying Sophia and Mocking Alexa (group exhibition) , Yuz Museum, Shanghai,November 14, 2020 – January 31, 2021
Courtesy Erik Nordenhake
  • Common Interests and Reciprocal Esteem , Erik Nordenhake, April 5 - May 5, 2018, Stockholm
  • Way of Connecting , iMAL, 24 April - 17 May 2019, Brussels
Image courtesy Belenius/Nordenhake
  • Kites & Websites , Belenius/Nordenhake, March 31 - April 24, 2016, Stockholm
Photo by Ben Hincker
  • Strasbourg Biennale, Touch Me – Being a Citizen in the Digital Age, Strasbourg, France, 2018
Photo by Jules Lister, courtesy of The Collection Museum
  • Red Lines with Landscapes at The Usher Gallery , The Collection Museum, June 1 - September 15, 2019, Lincoln, UK
Photo courtesy Kalyon Kültür
  • Landscapes , Touched by Humankind, Kalyon Kültür, 2022, Istanbul, Turkey
Courtesy Erik Nordenhake
  • Erik Nordenhake at CODE, August 30 – September 2, 2018, Copenhagen , (Courtesy Erik Nordenhake)
Courtesy Erik Nordenhake
  • Erik Nordenhake at CODE , August 30 – September 2, 2018, Copenhagen
(Courtesy Carroll/Fletcher)
  • Looking at one thing and thinking of something else (group exhibition) , 11 November 2016 – 29 April, 2017, London
Photo by Marc Knip, courtesy of NOORDERLICHT.

Text

On first sight these offerings might be read as a counter-proposition to the digital sphere; a valorization of the landscape outside/beyond cyberspace; a picturesque invitation to step away from the keyboard and out into the ‘real’ world. But the infra-red constitution of these images mean that they remain coloured by postindustrial reality: In fact, any virtual picture of the world that is conditional upon the delivery of data by fibre-optic cable relies upon infra-red signalling. The internet is, Roth reminds us, ‘an infra laser light, blinking through glass’.

This electro-magnetic filter, stacked atop more obviously ‘real’ geography, made up of minerals, molecules, biology, and so on, is increasingly powering the radical rearrangement of the latter. Its overlay is what turns a landscape into, additionally, a netscape – rendering it more intensively exploitable. ‘Filmed’ in the same frequency wave that the internet modulates at, if Roth’s moving images do not always show a figural cable then this is because it is unnecessary – after all, they are pushing the whole pictorial proposition through one, in a gesture that parallels facts on the ground.

Arrayed on the gallery wall, Roth’s red landscapes flicker across a mass of variously sized screens, suggestive of a mutant command and control center – with ethernet cables spilling onto the floor, out of the room and into the walls. As such, the viewer is presented with a series of windows onto the world, all opened at once like so many browser tabs. Leaning on the trope of the panopticon, this dramaturgy directs any question of morality towards the viewer. For these are not just windows. In light of Roth’s sketch of just how they operate, in laser beam, it would appear that the internet screen does not just get looked at: It touches the things that it mediates; it handles scenes and landscapes. Herewith, the most contemporary mutations of the appendage: the hand becomes the eye; the eye becomes an arm, a hand, a tentacle, a world.

— Nadim Samman

Landscapes has been generously supported by Artangel, Creative Capital, and Masters and Servers

Exhibited

  • Centre Wallonia, Deep Fields, Paris, 2026
  • Meixihu Contemporary Art Museum, Topologies of the Real, Changsha, China, 2025
  • SVA MA Curatorial Practice, Everyone Will Die but I Always Think I Won’t, New York City, USA, 2023
  • Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, A leap into the Void. Art beyond matter, Bergamo, Italy, 2023
  • Times Art Museum, A Momentary Spring, Beijing, China, 2023
  • Times Art Museum Chengdu, A Momentary Spring, Chengdu, China, 2023
  • Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art | ZK, Topologies of the Real, Shenzhen, China, 2023
  • Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Universal / Remote, Kumamoto, Japan, 2023
  • Les Rencontre d’Arles, Songs of the Sky, Arles, France, 2022
  • Kalyon Kültür, Touched by Humankind, Istanbul, Turkey, 2022
  • Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China, 2022
  • C/O Berlin, Songs of the Sky, Berlin, Germany, 2021
  • Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Lux Aeterna, University of Washington, USA, 2021
  • Noorderlicht International Photo Festival, Makeable Mind, Groningen, Netherlands, 2021
  • Culturgest, Red Lines with Landscapes: Portugal, Porto, Portugal, 2020
  • Culturgest, Red Lines with Landscapes: Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal, 2020
  • Yuz Museum, Lying Sophia and Mocking Alexa, Shanghai, China, 2020
  • Chronus Art Center, WE=LINK:十个小品 Ten Easy Pieces, online, 2020
  • The Collection Lincoln & Usher Gallery, Red Lines with Landscapes at The Usher Gallery, Lincoln, UK, 2019
  • Noorderlicht House of Photography, IN VIVO tempo, Groningen, Netherlands, 2019
  • Artangel (Pop-up at Viaduct Furniture), Red Lines Showroom, London, 2018
  • Erik Nordenhake, Common Interests and Reciprocal Esteem, Stockholm, Sweden, 2018
  • Strasbourg Biennale, Touch Me – Being a Citizen in the Digital Age, Strasbourg, France, 2018
  • Mona Bismarck American Center, Landscape with a Ruin, Paris, France, 2017
  • The Armory Show, Platform with Carroll / Fletcher, New York City, 2017
  • Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 2016
  • Belenius/Nordenhake, Kites & Websites, Stockholm, Sweden, 2016
  • Skuc Gallery, The Black Chamber: surveillance, paranoia, invisibility & the internet, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2016
  • Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Black Chamber: surveillance, paranoia, invisibility & the internet, Rijeka, Croatia, 2016
  • Carroll/Fletcher, Voices Over the Horizon, London, UK, 2015

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