Avi Roth
CURRICULUM VITAE
Tel Aviv Polytechnic 1968-72 Diploma of Photographic Studies
London Film School 1972-74 Honors Diploma
UCLA 1988-89 Guest Lecturer, Department of Arts
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Transylvania, Roth has led a storied human existence. Fluent in three languages as a child, Roth and his family immigrated by way of Greece to Israel. He subsequently added Hebrew to his repertoire. As a young man, he served in the Israeli military and went on to earn his degree in photography at the Tel Aviv Polytechnic.
At age 25, Roth moved to yet another foreign country whose language he did not speak. This time, he learned English by necessity while studying at the prestigious London Film School where he graduated with honors. In 1974, Roth relocated to the United States, namely Los Angeles, where he built a family and has resided ever since.
Prior to his celebrated unveiling of the coffeegraph® in 2006, Roth had an illustrious and successful career spanning four decades as a commercial photographer and photojournalist. His elegant photographic work has appeared in many prominent publications including: Vogue Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Architectural Digest. Since 2006, Roth creates coffee pigment to paint expressive distortions of form and space depicting paintings of mythological, allegorical, and anthropomorphic subjects.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work has an abundance of layers and their boundaries are soft and vague. Coffeegraphs are visual repositories of accumulated conversations extended and made more articulate in the course of time. These reflective thoughts are imbedded in every coffeegraph® and are being reinterpreted visually into abstract forms. The discerned anthropomorphic landscape of coffee patterns and swirls reveal forgotten dreams and secrets veiled by time in the collective subconscious. My visual vocabulary is a language of exotic origin that speaks in monochromatic and color shapes and textures creating spatial tension between hues of joy, delight, inner turmoil and darkly twisted anxiety.
From you the observer in quest of discovery I would ask that you allow time for contemplation. Enter it with readiness to explore new directions through the door I left open [the title]. I hope that not only will you learn to appreciate the abstraction of this art, but that you will be guided to the same discourse from which the art originates finding within it a wealth of personal meaning”
EXHIBITIONS
Solo
- art-space gallery, October 2015
- Think Tank Gallery, December 2013
- Jones Coffee Roasters, Pasadena, April 2013
- W Hotel, Los Angeles, November 2012
- Sotheby’s International, Rancho Santa Fe, September 2012
- Roth Gallery, May 19th, 2012 Pasadena, CA
Group
- Jerusalem Biennale, October 2017
- UJA-NY Gallery, New York, September 2017
- Think Thank Gallery, LA, August 2017
- Open Studios Art Walk, June 2016
- Fabrik Art Expo, Los Angeles, January 2016
- Open Studios Art Walk, December 2015
- Santa Monica Museum at Bergamot Station, December 2015
- Gensler, DTLA, October 2015
- Jerusalem Biennale, September 2015
- Open Studios Art Walk, June 2015
- Think Tank Gallery, January 2015
- Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts, UCLA, January 2014
- Hale Arts, Santa Monica, CA January 2014
- Art San Diego, November 2013
- EuroPane, Pasadena August 2013
- Art Basel Miami, December 2012