Faded: Steve Roden's paintings and sculptures at Griffin Contemporary Exhibitions fail to make much of a first impression. After time passes and these works are again called to mind, they seem even smaller than their actual dimensions.
Most of Roden's paintings depict words interspersed with abstract shapes, laid out across fields of smeared paint, polyurethane and wax. Some arrangements resemble incomplete crossword puzzles, and others look like coded abbreviations or the keys of a nonsensical typewriter. Poetic references to French adorn one canvas; the names of trees fill another; a string of adjectives forms a third.
