{"id":28274,"date":"2015-04-29T13:34:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T17:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/?p=28274"},"modified":"2015-05-18T13:19:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T17:19:49","slug":"interview-with-frank-rodick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/?p=28274","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Frank Rodick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Frank Rodick in front of Parade in Petticoat Lane (detail), April, 2015.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

Interview with Frank Rodick (F.R) by\u00a0Emese Krun\u00e1k-Hajagos (E.K-H)<\/strong><\/p>\n

E.K-H: You are an internationally acclaimed Toronto artist with many exhibitions to your credit and numerous articles about your photographs. This one is your first solo show in the city. Why have there not been any shows of your work earlier. How did you and Articsok Gallery find each other?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: Actually, it\u2019s not my first solo show in Toronto, but it is the first in ten years. The simplest reason for that is I\u2019ve been busy with exhibitions outside the country, mostly in the US and Latin America, also in Europe and elsewhere. I\u2019ve generally shown where I\u2019ve been invited. Artics\u00f3k Gallery found me through LinkedIn and my website.<\/p>\n

E.K-H: Your show Everything Will Be Forgotten<\/em> is about the past, your mother and your child-self. \u00a0Why did you decide to dedicate a whole exhibition to that theme?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R:\u00a0It\u2019s because that\u2019s my most recent work and I\u2019ve never shown it in Canada. I did this work \u2013 in particular the portraits of my mother \u2013 in response to my mother\u2019s death in 2010. What compelled me most were her life, her death and our relationship. As for the self-portraits \u2013 and there are self-portraits of myself as both an adult and as a child \u2013 they followed, I suppose, because of this reflective frame of mind. The death of a parent \u2013 especially one\u2019s last surviving parent \u2013 is a seminal event for most people and it gets you thinking, more and perhaps differently, about your own life. Fates cooperated because I found a lot of old photographs and documents in family archives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, 97532, no. 1, 2011, archival pigment print,100 x 63.9 cm.<\/span><\/p>\n

E.K-H: On Parade in Petticoat Lane<\/em> your young mother seems to be walking down Memory Lane with a small wicker basket in her hand. She could be in any old European city but the blind musician hints at an American one. Why did you choose those elements for this photomontage?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: This image is based on an old photograph taken by my father in 1952, I believe. My parents really were in London\u2019s Petticoat Lane according to what\u2019s written on the back of the photograph. It\u2019s a great picture, the best photo my father \u2013 an amateur photographer \u2013 ever did. All the figures are in the original photograph: my mother, the woman behind her, the veteran with medals and the chained monkey on his shoulder, and the blind musician. It\u2019s really brilliant on its own. What I did was transform the image, push and pull it into the shape I wanted it to have. So I injected formal elements like the colours (the original is black and white), the over- and underlaid textures. I scratched over the monkey. I exaggerated and de-emphasized things like facial features: eyes, the shapes of mouths. The little changes \u2013 that when you put them all together can mean a radical changing of the overall image \u2013 are a version of what R Crumb called cheating \u2013 little things you do to push the image in the direction you want.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Parade in Petticoat Lane (my mother holds her basket), 2014, archival pigment print, 100 x 152 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/p>\n

When I look at it I feel like the image is a fantastic harvest of humanity as well as part of my mother\u2019s story. There are these tragic characters: the veteran, the blind trumpet player, and that sad chained monkey looking down. The monkey is my favourite; he slays me with his pathos. There\u2019s the woman behind my mother who towers above her with this knowing, ominous look directly at the viewer. And there\u2019s my mother, also looking into the camera, with what\u2019s to me an almost mystified look, a deer in the headlights. For me, it speaks to her anxieties about life and her future \u2013 that the world would be too much for her, that its unyielding, violent reality would overtake and crush her. It\u2019s like an apocalypse of the everyday, a sad and dark carnival.<\/p>\n

E.K-H: All the images are touched up and aged. They look even older than their historical time would insist, almost daguerreotype like. Why?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: My intention in manipulating the images isn\u2019t necessarily to make them look more aged. What I\u2019m trying to do is make the image represent something more real to me, not less. More real as an expression of something passed through my subjective self. I often quote C\u00e9line, who is maybe my favourite twentieth century writer. C\u00e9line said he wanted to create hallucinations that were more real than everyday life and carry the reader to a deeper and more compelling subjective and personal reality. I get that completely.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Portrait, Frances Rodick (red pearls), 2012, archival pigment print, 100 x 81 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/span><\/p>\n

E.K-H: Your mother was truly beautiful but in many of her portraits her face is destroyed. It reminds me of the damage that sometimes resulted when the glass plate, photographers used, got dirt stuck on it or some acid ran on it. It looks like something similar happened to the photos of your mother\u2019s face. The image appears cut or eroded by acids or smashed by some dirt and these attacks wiped off her identity (Portrait, Frances Rodick<\/em> series). What did you intend to express with this method?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: There are a number of things going on simultaneously here for me. What I do is just start trying a lot of things and seeing what they look like, and those things that appeal to me visually, well, I work with those some more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Portrait, Frances Rodick (stone cold), 2012, archival pigment print, 100 x 81 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/span><\/p>\n

When I look at the obfuscations on my mother\u2019s face I see different things. There\u2019s the damage of Alzheimer\u2019s disease, which is something my mother lived with longer than any human should: well over 15 years. That\u2019s a disease that\u2019s a personality destroyer. There\u2019s the damage caused by not only her experiences but also the way I think she internalized some of those experiences, how she processed her hardships and also the hardships of others, in particular, the personal consequences of anti-Semitism, which, of course, found its ultimate expression in the Nazi extermination. There\u2019s also the obfuscation caused by my own perceptions and memories, which “get in the way,” carry their own blockages and blind alleys, and prevent me from knowing her, just as they get in the way of anyone knowing anyone else. That obfuscation runs two ways \u2013 it runs from my own self to my mother, just as it ran from my mother out into the world. I mean, really, when it comes to knowing the world, knowing each other, knowing ourselves, we\u2019re all far more blind than we are sighted. That\u2019s the reality that I see. Another point about the markings over my mother\u2019s face: I think they\u2019re an expression of my anger, which, sadly, is a tendency I share with my mother, although our respective angers expressed themselves differently and in different directions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Portrait, Frances Rodick (you console me), 2012, archival pigment print, 100 x 81 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/span><\/p>\n

E.K-H: The other day we ran to each other at Starbucks and you mentioned that your work is currently on display at the Baltic Biennale of Photography in Kaliningrad and there is \u201ctrouble\u201d around it. It touched a nerve of a politician who wants to remove your pieces, as he finds your depiction of your mother in that way \u201cdisrespectful\u201d. I don\u2019t think it has anything to do with your mother. It is a very expressive montage that addresses suffering. Death is one thing, suffering is another. Middle Europeans know suffering too well, its stages, the distortions it can make to their faces. People may relate to your works there in many different levels. There is a layered meaning in them, and a very strong one. I am sure people in Kaliningrad who go and see your photographs appreciate them more than you can imagine. Art is a political act there. Are you aware of the possibilities of different interpretations of your work? How do you feel about it?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>Frank Rodick, Portrait, Frances Rodick (from left to right: Sex, Disposal, Time), 2012, archival pigment print, each: 190 x 95 cm. Installation view from the Baltic Biennale of Photography in Kaliningrad, April 2015. Photo: Dmitry Kuryshev.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n

F.R: The problem in Kaliningrad has to do with politics and religion. Of course, I totally accept that there will be different interpretations of my work. Subjectivity\u2019s inherent to the whole thing. I\u2019ve always said that the longer view of the creative act winds up being a fusion between three elements: the artist, the artwork, and the audience that interprets the work. That fusion is dynamic, largely because of the changing audience, and the changing experience of the audience. No problem there at all. In fact, I can find it very exciting when I hear interpretations of my work that I didn\u2019t expect. When I showed my early work, Liquid City<\/em>, in Latin America, the Argentines would often interpret it in light of their own recent history. They\u2019d talk about the similarities between the blurred, anonymous figures in Liquid City<\/em> and their own tragic Desaparecidos, those people murdered anonymously en masse in Argentina\u2019s Dirty War. Obviously, that wasn\u2019t my intention in creating the work, but that doesn\u2019t mean the interpretation wasn\u2019t insightful, interesting, or ultimately valid. It was all of those things, and those people did me the generous honour of taking the time to place my work closely next to their own intimate experiences.<\/p>\n

What I object to is careless, lazy, cynical, or pig-headed interpretation. That is, you have people who can barely be bothered to look, never mind think or feel, before they start talking about the work. Unfortunately, there\u2019s nothing I can do about it.<\/p>\n

I just make pictures. I make pictures to flesh out my personal obsessions and ruminations, to amuse myself, to have something to do that doesn\u2019t bore me and doesn\u2019t feel like a waste of time, to do something rather than nothing, sometimes to share something of myself with others, sometimes to scratch a nasty itch. What other people choose to do with the things I make isn\u2019t up to me.<\/p>\n

E.K-H: Your childhood, grotto like, images are very disturbing. They all pose a young boy\u2019s body without limbs, mutilated (Everything Will Be Forgotten, self-portrait as child<\/em> series). Why? Didn\u2019t you have a happy childhood?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: There were times I remember as happy. When a person suffers greatly, that suffering is often visited upon their children in some way. Perhaps not every single time, but usually \u2013 it depends a great deal on how the parent deals with their own suffering. And when there\u2019s a background of historical trauma, this pain carries a cross-generational quality that can take generations to burn itself out.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you something I\u2019m grateful for. Whatever the suffering I endured, I at least had some of the resources \u2013 whether they be external or internal \u2013 to try to make something out of that suffering that, I hope, isn\u2019t destructive. My mother didn\u2019t have the resources I had.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Everything Will Be Forgotten, self-portrait as child, no. 1.2, (left) and no. 2.1 (right), 2014, archival pigment print, 100 x 70 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/span><\/p>\n

E.K-H: There is so much pain and suffering in your photographs. As Nancy Brokaw said in her essay about your work, Sex, Death and Videotape<\/em>, \u201cI take one look and ask Do I really want these images lodged in my brain? Once you’ve crossed over into the mysteries of life and death, can you get a return ticket?\u201d Why is your view so dark? How can you live with your images?<\/span><\/p>\n

F.R: I don\u2019t see my view as dark. It\u2019s the world that\u2019s dark. Not always, but when it is, and when it slams into you and yours, it\u2019s transformative. I often think other people spend an awful lot of time and energy kidding themselves about the world, about other people, and about themselves. Sometimes I wonder how they live with that, especially when a crack in the carapace starts opening up. There are times when one gets a little more closely acquainted with reality\u2019s cudgel and, after that, I\u2019m sure the world\u2019s never quite the same place. That\u2019s the part where there\u2019s no return ticket.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I live with my images just fine \u2014 better than I live with the world around me if you really want to know. As for the pictures, here\u2019s what I think and don\u2019t think. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re the result of compromise, or other people\u2019s opinions. They\u2019re not hand-me-downs, pleas for acceptance, or chips in a game where I\u2019m trying to get ahead. They\u2019re not propped up with a wink and a smile. They feel like they\u2019re mine. And in this world, how many things feel like they actually belong to you? There\u2019s comfort there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Frank Rodick, Three Studies for a Mouth (Explorations in statecraft, love, and the passing of woes), 2010, digital chromogenic print on metallic paper, 10.1 x 18.4 cm.\u00a0Courtesy of the artist and Artics\u00f3k Gallery<\/span><\/p>\n

Emese Krun\u00e1k-Hajagos<\/p>\n

*Exhibition information: Everything Will Be Forgotten<\/em> by Frank Rodick, April 30 \u2013 May 31, 2015, as part of Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, Artics\u00f3k Gallery, 1697 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed \u2013 Sat, 12 \u2013 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

*Note: A dialogue with Frank Rodick On sons and mothers, love, hate, and death\u2026 and why we make pictures even though Everything Will Be Forgotten<\/em> is accompanying Frank Rodick’s show at Articsok Gallery on\u00a0Thursday, May 7, 2015 \/ 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Emese Krun\u00e1k-Hajagos<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are times when one gets a little more closely acquainted with reality\u2019s cudgel and, after that, I\u2019m sure the world\u2019s never quite the same place. That\u2019s the part where there\u2019s no return ticket.<\/p>\n

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