Roy Arden

The Mole King

Monte Clark is pleased to present an online viewing room for Roy Arden’s body of work, The Mole King

Roy Arden’s work can be found in many public collections including The National Gallery of Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Arden has exhibited in dozens of international exhibitions from New York to Sharjah, and Berlin to Sydney. In 2007 the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted a survey of his work covering the period 1981-2007. In 2013, Arden exhibited in Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C. In 2018 his work was included in the exhibition ‘Anna Atkins Refracted’ at the New York Public Library.  In November 2021, his work will be included in TRUE PICTURES? Contemporary Photography from Canada and the USA. Sprengel Museum, Hannover.  Traveling to Museum der Moderne in Salzburg in 2022.

Roy Arden’s The Mole King speaks to the agency of the natural world, their confrontation and co-mingling with human-made forces. Arden’s work includes experimental cyanotypes and hanging assemblages constructed with plant roots, wire, and found objects. All of the works hover between depiction and allegory.

Arden’s cyanotype prints focus on plant roots and small objects seen as if underground by an archeologist’s or metal detectorist’s mind’s eye. Roots collected along West Coast beaches leave their silhouettes of lightning-like growth patterns: we see the will of the tendrils pushing downward and then changing direction in reaction to resistance. Soil and micro-organisms have been replaced with man-made litter such as buttons, can tabs, and nails entangled in the root forms recognizing that we have entered in the Anthropocene. A series of these images is printed on the insides of used packaging materials such as medicines or frozen waffles. The shapes of these unfolded boxes were never meant to be considered as they are, but to disappear into the more familiar cuboids that deliver our consumables. The hanging assemblages again depict the underworld — the viewer finds themselves beneath the gnarled roots, stones, and rusty fragments.

Visiting the gallery:
Walk-ins are welcome but the number of guests permitted in the gallery at one time will be limited. To avoid waiting, you may request an appointment during our open hours by emailing info@monteclarkgallery.com.

We observe COVID 19 protocols, and request that you maintain physical distancing and wear a mask while visiting the gallery.

If you are feeling unwell or have traveled internationally in the last 14 days, we ask that you do not visit the gallery at this time.

Roy Arden
At Least The Sky is Blue
2018
Cyanotype on found packaging
17.25 x 9.25 inches

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Roy Arden
Chthonic
2018
Bleached and double printed cyanotype on rag paper
20 x 14 inches

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Roy Arden
Proximal
2018
Cyanotype on found packaging
9.25 x 17.25 inches

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Roy Arden
Palace of The Mole King
2018
Cyanotype on found packaging
24 x 15 inches

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Roy Arden
Ghost Hoard
2018
Bleached and double printed cyanotype on rag paper
30 x 22 inches

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Roy Arden
Large Hoard 1
2018
Cyanotype on rag paper
30 x 22 inches

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Roy Arden
Black Potatoes
2018
Assemblage: roots, wire, and found objects

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Roy Arden
Twilight
2018
Assemblage: found objects on found picture frame
20 x 13 inches

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