Frank Rodick, Love, 2007, from the series Faithless Grottoes, Digital Type C Print, 36 x 96 inches / 91.4 x 243.8 cm
One of the most intellectually stimulating events of FotoFest 2010 was the opening of Canadian photographic artist Frank Rodick retrospective “Labyrinth of Desire,” curated by Katherine Ware at Houston’s Colton and Farb Gallery. I was not sure what to expect, having only seen one image before choosing to go to the opening, which was to feature a dialog between the photographer and curator.
Coming into the gallery, I could not help but be impressed by the large colorful images of Rodick’s Faithless Grottoes series. These are big, graphic images, either printed on very large paper or composed of several separately framed prints. The subject matter is people, but not portraiture. The original images are sometimes derived from photographing pornography on a TV screen, the faces of people in the throes of ecstasy, sometimes using models who are bound and gagged. Rodick then heavily manipulates the images digitally, distorting facial features, enlarging teeth or lips, blurring features and adding specks and noise to the images, artfully playing with them. This series is printed in color, but a nearly monochromatic color. Each print is boldly black and blue or black and red, cold or hot in tone. The result is painterly, abstracted from visual reality, yet still tied to it and the source of the picture remains obviously photographic.
To tell the truth, I found these big prints nightmarish and overwhelmingly creepy. Like pictures of Jesus bleeding on the cross, there is a sadomasochistic quality to Rodick’s Grottoes series that I gives me a hard time upon seeing the pictures. I’m sure some people have a different reaction, and there is no denying the power and quality of the work. Living with one of these pieces would be too depressing, and this is coming from someone who admires Japanese war triptych prints from the Meiji period and their stylized violence. Rodick’s photos are not for me.
Frank Rodick, Untitled No. 34, 1995, Gelatin Silver Print, 8.5 x 13.5 inches / 21.6 x 34.3 cm
Some of the other series by the artist were much more accessible to me. In the rooms featuring the early street photos where Frank deliberately used slow shutter speeds to blur walking people to the soft, cropped nudes of his Sub Rosa series that followed it, I found my self relaxing a bit from the tension induced by the Grottoes series. Even the Arena series, which uses many of the same images as Grottoes is less devastating, because the prints are much smaller and the color pallet more muted. These Arena pictures are more monochromatic, like toned black and white prints.
Frank Rodick, Sub Rosa No. 5, 1995, Gelatin Silver Print, 16.25 x 12.75 inches / 41.3 x 32.4 cm
Finally there was Rodick’s newest work, Revisitations, small color triptychs of oval prints bezel set and sumptuously mounted in velvet lined wooden boxes, almost like old Daguerreotypes. We were encouraged to put on cotton gloves and hold these pictures, a more intimate experience. Revisitations seemed more personal and nostalgic for Rodick, and one piece included a postmortem photo of his father.
Frank Rodick, Three Studies for a Mouth (Explorations in statecraft, love, and the passing of woes), 2010, Type C Print mounted in wooden case, 4 x 8 ¾ inches / 10.1x 22 cm
After I had been looking around a few minutes, visitors were encouraged to sit for the gallery talk, which took the form of an introduction by Katherine Ware, photography curator of the New Mexico Museum of Art, followed by an interview and discussion of Rodick’s work. Ware told how she had met Rodick at FotoFest 2008 and decided to help him put together this mid-career retrospective. Then Ware noted how photography is very good at reproducing the surface appearance of things, while painting can more easily explore and portray the feelings of the artist and asked “How do you get below the surface with photography?”
Rodick replied that he is much more interested in “bending the media” away from capturing the surface of appearances, that he is no longer interested in making straight or documentary photography. He said he likes to manipulate his photos to give them tension. And, surprisingly for someone who is obviously a master of digital manipulation, Rodick likes to take advantage of chance occurrences, to make a final product that he did not plan or expect to make.
Ware asked Rodick why he often works now in multi-image formats, and he said he likes the way two or more images can relate to each other and build a kind of narrative, a miniature movie in the viewers imagination. This is something I wholly understand. I also find multi image works fascinating. Even the simplest sort of diptych a side by side scene, like the ones I often make, develops a sort of story about something, even if it just is about taking the two photos. Ware asked if Rodick expected the audience for his work to know the language of these narratives, and he replied “the short answer is yes and no.” The gallery audience laughed, and Rodick went on to say that while some elements of the narratives he constructs are intentional, every person is going to have a different reaction. To me Rodick’s multi-image works suggest strange disturbing stories, ones of bondage, sadomasochistic sex and violence, even kidnapping and torture.
Rodick hopes that his images rather than showing literal visual truth will be emotionally authentic, to feel true. And Katherine Ware agreed speaking of how these images reminded her of how she sometimes sees things in dreams and remembrances in the back of her head. Rodick knows there will be various reactions to the pictures, from some people finding them the sexiest things they have ever seen to others finding them horrific. He related an anecdote of one collector who told him the images in Faithless Grottoes were very powerful and emotional. For a moment he was excited hoping she would buy some of his work, thinking “how many would you like?” But then she continued, saying “And I can’t bear to look at them,” and he was devastated. And he told on the other hand of receiving some very frank sexual propositions in emails from people who have seen his work and are turned on by it.
Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Figure with Meat , 1954, Oil on Canvas, 51 1/8 x 48 inches / 129.9 x 121.9 cm
Not surprisingly Ware asked about Rodick’s admiration of British painter Francis Bacon, and he confirmed he is a fan of Bacon’s painting which similarly distorts human faces and forms and often features sadomasochistic elements. I think the influence can clearly be seen in the enlarged teeth of several of Rodick’s pictures like Decrement (All flesh / 63 Chambers) which echoes Bacon’s Figure with Meat, in which the figure is a distortion of a painting by Velasquez of Pope Innocent X.
Frank Rodick, Decrement (All flesh / 63 chambers), 2010, Array of nine Type C Prints, each 26 x 20 inches / 66 x 50.8 cm
At the end, Ware and Rodick opened the floor for questions from the audience. No one seemed ready to start, so like a good teachers pet I jumped in first with a couple questions. I’m a pretty shy guy around new people, but asking questions is something I always am able to do. I was curious as to whether or not Rodick kept all the images that failed to satisfy him, and he said it’s becomes much easier with everything becoming digital, so he does keep his failures stored on his computer now, though he did not when he was working in the darkroom earlier in his career. Katherine Ware pointed out that sometimes artists are not he best people to evaluate whether a particular piece they made is a failure or a success, so it is good that it has become easier for photographers to keep all their work.
Afterward, Ware and Rodic came up to me and thanked me for bresking the ice on the Q & A session. I had a nice chat with Ware on Maine and the outdoors, which she loves too.
