Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present a new body of collages by Los Angeles-based artist Steve Roden. Over the past 30 years, Roden has developed a highly idiosyncratic aesthetic language and a complex practice across multiple media distilling personal meaning into abstract forms often relating to text and sound. Rooted in an interest in the relationship between sound and language, Roden’s new collages continue his particular visual lexicon of abstraction coupled with found imagery from his collection of album covers, bringing together his interest in abstract forms and experimental music onto intimately scaled visual planes. Taking the impetus from the collaged imagery Roden then improvises with acrylic paint creating dynamic and layered compositions.

“These collages were made in fall 2020 while the world was in pandemic lockdown. They are an outcrop from the individual collaged album covers I made for the limited release of my 45” inch vinyl sound recording produced by Anomalous Records. Collage has long been part of my practice, it allows for an intuitive and tactile approach in combining disparate elements on a single visual plane. The source material is often from international design and architecture magazines and the color palette echoes the larger painted collages made earlier in the year. This scaled-down improvisational approach helps me stretch in new directions with my ideas and forms.”

— Steve Roden

Steve Roden received an MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Recent solo and two- person exhibitions include, the walls with sand in a single neutral color, Spazioersetti, Udine, Italy; Steve Roden, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Mulhouse, France; Steve Roden and Alexandra Grant: These Carnations Defy Language at the Pasadena Museum of California Art; The Spaces Contained In Each (Installation), St. Cornelius Chapel, Governor’s Island, New York, NY (collaboration with Stephen Vitiello); Jenny Perlin & Steve Roden, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH; bells, shells, steps and silences, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; some small fires, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Center, City University of Hong Kong; a song without words / a music without sound, Le Bon Accueil, Rennes, France; Steve Roden: In Between; A Mid-Career Survey, curated by Howard Fox, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; and when words become forms, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA. Roden’s work has also been included in exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, Chicago; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK; the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado; and Sculpture Center, New York, NY among many others. Steve Roden’s work is in several public collections including the Hammer Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Palm Springs Museum; The Pomona College Museum of Art; The Arizona State University Art Museum; The Henry Art Gallery; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC.