Sarah Roche

Marvin Gardens is pleased to present Altered Scenery, Sarah Roche’s debut solo exhibition in New York. A self-taught painter hailing from Scottsdale Arizona, Roche paints in a stylized surrealism documenting human interventions in the natural world. Painting her local landscape, these seven intimately sized canvases in our second gallery display a very adept eye at rendering light in different temperatures. Scenes of the sunset and her favorite yellow tree are paired with the harsh black asphalt of a parking lot. As if reporting on habitat creation, the human architectural elements are rendered the most abstract, and almost symbolic. Which contrasts nicely with the slightly more naturalistic landscape components. Notably, figures are not present in the images, heightening the contrasts between the two systems of organizing structure and space. Light upon foliage is consistently rendered the most naturalistic. Citing influences of Gertrude Abercrombie, Matthew Wong, and Marsden Hartley, Roche is in good painting company, and although the influences are present they appear at this juncture appropriately internalized. The artist holds unease in contemplating the long-term effects that humans have on the environment. With flattened perspectives, Roche plays with scale to prioritize where she wants the viewer to focus, and leaves us suspended in the tension between the two forces.