Art Practice as Research

[Coming soon]

Tim Roda. Untitled #167. 16 x 23 inches. Black and white photograph. Reproduced courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery. Artist is also represented by Art Agents, Hamburg; Angell Gallery, Toronto; Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, San Francisco.

“I started using photography [because] it is the medium that best allows me to depict metaphors of family history that might find a resonance with the viewer. Although the final product is a photograph, the work casually traverses aspects of installation, sculpture, photography, film and performance. A camera is used to record one moment in time that hovers between memories and constructed commentaries, yet is a documentation of “real time” events… Every scene from this body of work begins as a theatrical and visual concept, which is then played out by my family. Although we are the immediate subjects, the work is filled with metaphorical reverberations of my own memories of childhood and family traditions. Hopefully, these metaphors are open-ended enough to the viewer to create personal associations with their own history.” Tim Roda, December 2005. (Retrieved from www.gregkucera.com/roda_statement.htm on March 22, 2009.)

In Chapter 1, Pigment to Pixel, I discuss Robert Solso’s ideas about visual cognition and his description of visual processes and sensory experiences. In the following extract I relate these ideas to the art of Tim Roda:

Another example of a “composite of sensory experiences” can be found in the images of Tim Roda. The world that happens between the everyday existences we know as individuals and families, and the space peopled by memories of all sorts, is the reality that best describes the constructions that Roda photographs. Thoughtfully and intimately assembled as tableaus of remembered incidents rendered larger than life that the viewer cannot know, there are nonetheless enough provocative image bits to prompt enough connections to raise the discomfort level. Much in the way that what we know derives from what we see is a mere sampling of what is around us, scanning a Tim Roda image and drawing inferences is a similar selective perceptual process of cognitive processing. As he explains, “the photographs capture moments of ambiguity that can be understood on several layers, both personal and universal.  I strive to produce a sensation that makes people both familiar and uneasy about how incongruent our lives can be.”

Extract from Art Practice as Research, Chapter 1, Pigment to Pixel, pp. 21-22.