OFF SEASON

Shack Case Studies

In Off Season, Roth continues his case studies of small, vernacular structures. Modest in scale and utilitarian in purpose, these shacks are bound to cycles of use, absence, and seasonal change. During the warmer months, they become places of social gathering and activity. In winter, that life recedes. Battened down and emptied, the structures become dormant—quietly hibernating, isolated beneath the chill. Roth is drawn to the paradox of this seasonal transformation: the contrast between summer and winter, use and abandonment, presence and absence. During the colder months, these structures can feel forgotten, even abandoned. Roth seeks instead to capture the quiet beauty of this interval—the pause between one season and the next, when the structures remain as traces of a life temporarily suspended.Working between observation and recollection, Roth approaches each work as a singular case study—an individual portrait. Each structure is isolated and centered within a monochromatic winter landscape, its form set against a restrained field of atmosphere and space. A distant shoreline or horizon may appear, while the specific identity of the structure remains deliberately unresolved. Its purpose is never fully explained. Titles may offer a hint, but what ultimately remains is the structure itself. Using painted papers, layered pigment, abrasion, and fragmented surfaces, collage becomes Roth’s medium of choice. He constructs each work with geometric simplicity and restraint. The paintings move between recognition and abstraction, recording the physical presence of their subjects while allowing material, process, and recollection to both define and interrupt their forms. Repetition establishes a shared vocabulary across the series. Each structure is set within a three-part stage of sky, land, and sea. Recurring elements—abstracted windows, doors, counters, vacant benches, roof pipes, fragments of debris, numbers and letters, broken angles, and varied icy textures —create a quiet typology. Yet subtle variations reveal the distinct character of each structure. Viewed together, the works become a collection of remembered places. Their similarities establish a shared language; their differences make each one strangely familiar and personal. Shaped by weather and subject to the rhythms of season and time, these modest structures exist within a landscape of quiet impermanence. Beneath their colorful, austere facades, something warmer seems to hum quietly underneath—the memory of activity, gathering, and human presence. The structures become small monuments to places that might otherwise disappear, carrying memory forward through their very absence. There is a subtle calm in these emptied spaces. The structures appear to wait, suspended in time, holding the trace of the season that has passed and the quiet expectation of its return. In Off Season, Roth finds a quiet beauty in that interval: the space between use and abandonment, presence and absence, departure and return.