URBAN BOP

2025

Side One

In URBAN BOP, Robert Roth channels the rhythmic spirit of jazz into a series of paintings shaped by emotion, energy, and improvisation. The works draw from the atmosphere of the city after dark — its gritty tones, low-lit clubs, and the pulse of sound — where music, movement, and feeling blur into a single experience.Roth’s compositions unfold through layered color fields intersected by spontaneous brushstrokes, free-flowing line, and scratched-in marks that fade in and out. Forms move through atmospheric space, cutting across a geometry of color like sound through air. Cubist trumpets are brushed with light, while layered textures and subtle shifts in tone emerge and dissolve, creating a sense of movement. Fragments of words and letters drift across the surface like notes, creating tension, rhythm, and pause. The surfaces feel worn-in and lived-with, shaped by repetition, memory, and improvisation — charged yet restrained. The paintings feel both structured and instinctive, echoing jazz’s balance of discipline and freedom. A jazz enthusiast himself, Roth’s first deep connection to the music began during his collage days at the Rhode Island School of Design. In the studio, he often paints late into the night to classic bebop and Brazilian jazz — Miles, Bird, Coltrane — allowing rhythm and tempo to guide the work. URBAN BOP reflects Roth’s intuitive approach to abstraction. Geometry and gesture coexist, while layers of color drift and overlap like clouds against a smoky evening sky. Through these works, Roth seeks to capture jazz’s inner resonance — the emotional charge, the sense of movement, and the way music moves through us and speaks to the soul.