In his Multi-touch painting series, American Artist Evan Roth explores digital culture and the universal habit that people of this digital era possess: the usage of touch-screen devices. Roth explores common tasks performed on the devices, as well as the universal touches and slides used. By performing the common routine tasks, he maps out the direction of the finger and uses tracing paper and ink to turn the impressions of the finger swipes into paintings. Each stark painting is named after the task they are representing, from twitter to checking emails. In this series, Roth turns our almost-second-nature actions into a textural study. Hence, Roth blurs the lines between the corporeal and the digital reality. With the rise of touch-screen usage, Roth’s artworks are more relevant now than they were when were first displayed in 2011. 

Roth’s works often explore our digital culture the role it plays in shaping our identity and future. His previous works include a wall of gifs for Occupy the Internet where he hacked the internet cache to create self-portraits, which was explained in his artist statement as “visualizing and archiving culture through unintended uses of technologies”. Roth also co-founded Graffiti Research Lab, a group that merges graffiti with technology using projectile LEDs which were famously displayed on the Brooklyn Bridge in 2008. 

Visit Evan Roth’s website here