Roy Arden: The Mole King

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Roy Arden, "Proximal," 2018

cyanotype on found packaging

Opening Reception - Thursday, June 14 6pm to 8pm

Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Roy Arden. ‘The Mole King’ includes cyanotypes on paper, cyanotypes on linen with attached objects, and hanging assemblages constructed with plant roots, wire, and found objects. All of the works hover between depiction and allegory.

For his cyanotypes on paper, Arden has used different techniques of emulsion coating, developing, bleaching and toning. This body of photogram prints focuses on plant roots and small objects seen as if underground by an archaeologist’s or metal detectorist’s mind’s eye. Roots collected along West Coast beaches leave their silhouettes of lightning-like growth patterns: we see the will of the tendrils pushing downward and then changing direction in reaction to resistance. Some of these works show tiny metal objects entangled in the root forms making these depictions not of nature but of the Anthropocene. A series of these images is printed on the insides of used packaging materials such as for medicines or frozen waffles. The shapes of these unfolded boxes were never meant to be considered as they are, but to disappear into the more familiar cuboids that deliver our consumables.

Arden’s cyanotypes on linen continue the theme of the paper works but include actual objects scavenged from beaches, sidewalks and streets; broken glass, bottle caps and fragments of lost jewelry. The hanging assemblages again depict the underworld — the viewer finds themselves beneath gnarled roots, stones and rusty fragments.

Roy Arden’s work can be found in many public collections including The National Gallery of Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Arden has exhibited in dozens of international exhibitions from New York to Sharjah, and Berlin to Sydney. In 2007 the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted a survey of his work covering the period 1981–2007. In 2013, Arden exhibited in Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C.. Arden will have new work in the exhibition ‘Anna Atkins Refracted’ at the New York Public Library in September 2018.