2025

Robert Roth has long been drawn to the architecture of urban and rural dwellings. In his series Small Monuments, he continues his exploration of metaphor, structure and sense of place. Each piece becomes a kind of portrait — a quiet celebration of culture, community, and home. Derived from close observation and memory, these small-scale studies of humble shelters reveal Roth’s passion for vernacular, hand-built dwellings — their sense of place and the stories they carry. Assembled from everyday materials, the works find a nuanced balance of shape and color, thrift and humor. These eccentric forms stand as modest, “friendly residents” of tight-knit coastal communities — perched proudly on their sandy, shadowed stilts: weathered, salty, and steadfast. Robert pares away their surroundings, allowing bold geometric forms to take center stage. The compositions balance architectural presence with openness and space. Working in a spontaneous collage method, he layers painted papers, found materials, wood, and cardboard — resulting in surfaces alive with texture, color, and graphic rhythm. Fragments of words, letters, numbers, and shapes emerge and recede, echoing memory and place. Like a cubist collage, the forms shift against each other — built unevenly on stilts, with flat-top roofs, shifting boards — caught between states of assembly and disassembly. Despite their energy, a quiet stillness lingers, exuding both vitality and vacancy, as if suspended in a dreamlike world. “Community serves as my inspiration,” says Roth. “As I explore the tension between memory and reality. Built from foraged scraps and recollection, these structures truly come alive for me — both as a homage and reminder of the spirit of home.”