STRONGROOM presents
Martin Roth:
“From 2017-2021 Martin Roth transformed a ruin into a garden for a plant concert”
JULY 10 - OCTOBER 31
OPEN WEEKENDS, 12-5PM
120 GRAND ST, NEWBURGH, NY 12550
Entrance on North side of building (next to library entrance)
PROGRAM DATES:
Saturday July 17th: 4-5PM
Johanna Yaun, Orange County Historian:
Downing and Vaux: Collaboration and Friendship
August 27 - 29: Open 12-5 PM, including Friday
August 28th: 2-3PM
Arnaud Gerspacher, Art Historian
“Martin Roth and the Critical Possibilities of Wonder”
September 25- 26: Open 12 - 5 PM
September 25, 1-2 PM
Peter Del Tredici, Botanist
"A Walk on the Wild Side: How Plants Adapt to Urban Habitats"
October 2, 6-8 PM
Fundraiser performance with Fan Letters (Dylan Neely and Alex Nathanson)
Canapes, beer, and wine will be served
Thank you to our Sponsors Henning’s Local + Newburgh Brewery
Tickets are $60, available here:
PRESS:
ARTFORUM
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202109/martin-roth-86955
MID HUDSON TIMES
OBSERVER
CHRONOGRAM
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FORBES:
THE ARCHITECT’S NEWSPAPER:
HYPPERALLERGIC
https://hyperallergic.com/649364/a-plant-concert-blooms-in-an-abandoned-building/
THE ART NEWSPAPER
MONOCLE
https://monocle.com/minute/2021/06/03/
SURFACE MAGAZINE
https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/martin-roth-newburgh-plant-concert-hall/
UNTAPPED CITIES
https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/01/newburgh-city-club-building-martin-roth/
HUDSON VALLEY WORD OF MOUTH
https://wavefarm.org/wf/archive/zeamrp
CBC AS IT HAPPENS PODCAST (PART TWO; MIN 39:38)
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.6053538
More information:
STRONGROOM is pleased to present a site-specific installation conceived by late artist Martin Roth in 2017. In 2019 Martin planned to create a garden and “plant concert” inside the walls of a historic ruin in Newburgh, but he sadly passed away that same summer. This year Strongroom will complete the installation according to his plans, at 120 Grand Street in Newburgh, NY.
Known as the “Newburgh City Club,” this important site has been in ruin for decades with the interior completely overtaken by nature. This building was one of the first collaborations between Calvert Vaux and Andrew Jackson Downing in 1852, and one of the last standing structures designed by Downing in Newburgh, his home town.
Downing was one of the most prominent tastemakers of his time. In 1850 he invited Calvert Vaux from England, and they began their collaborations on the White House and Smithsonian grounds. Downing died at a young age, but Vaux went on to famously design many major American parks with Frederick Law Olmsted, including Central Park, Prospect Park, and their final collaboration, Downing Park, named for their mentor and collaborator, also located in Newburgh. Later, the building became a social club, and eventually, after a restoration, it was brought to its current state by a fire in the 1980s.
Martin Roth planned to turn the interior of the structure into a "plant concert" and public garden, ironically referencing Downing’s philosophy that homes should exist harmoniously with nature, and exploring the idea of parks as domesticated nature. The project will pay homage to this history, and provide an immersive experience in which the plants will create their own sound, live, using biofeedback technology. Visitors will be allowed to enter an abandoned building-turned-garden, and experience "a concert made by the trees."
Martin said, "For the duration of the exhibition, the building will exist in two parallel realities: as the site of the former City Club, but also as the home of this new illusionary public garden. I will work closely with the natural environment of trees and bushes that already exist inside the site, but alter it, and in a sense cultivate it, with more colorful plants and flowers, and a winding path. I believe that if you change reality just a little bit, everything changes.”
The artist further noted, “While citizens of Newburgh are very aware of nature overtaking buildings and mainly see this as a nuisance, I want to alter and shape the environment inside the building to emphasize the beauty in nature reclaiming a site in an urban setting.”
Referencing A.J. Downing’s ideas for this building when it was first built as the home of William Culbert, Martin said, “It will be as Downing stated, ‘a home with a garden.’”
“While the building was used as the Newburgh City Club, it was a club for the city’s leading businessmen and politicians in the past. It will be especially exciting to make a statement that makes this space for everyone in Newburgh.”
Martin Roth was born in Austria in 1977, and died in New York in 2019. He was an installation artist whose work manifested in poetic interpretations of the sites he used, creating a set of parameters in which the environment itself can become an actor or collaborator in the piece. In his installations, Roth often played with the clash of the natural and artificial, consistently questioning the various interdependencies that make up one’s habitat, and emphasizing the idea of a “natural environment” through a mutual contamination of organic and artificial elements. Often centered around the nurture of living organisms, his works are strangely intimate and invite the viewer to engage directly, and consider their relationship to the work on a human scale.
Martin’s work has been exhibited internationally, including group exhibitions at The Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Künstlerhaus and mumok, Vienna, Austria; Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin, Germany; The Artist's Institute and Kunstraum, New York, NY; and solo shows at Capitol Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Biquini Wax, Mexico City, Mexico; and Louis B. James, New York, NY. He also had solo exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Foundation, yours mine and ours gallery in New York City, and the Riverside Art Museum in Beijing.
Click on the movie above to view the Kickstarter campaign.