Recent exhibitions

Casus Familia
Haroldo Conti Cultural Center of Memory, Buenos Aires
August/September 2018

The Haroldo Conti Cultural Center of Memory hosted a major exhibition of Frank Rodick’s work from 2010 to 2017—32 works chosen by the directors of Argentina’s biennial Festival de la Luz. Entitled Casus Familia, the exhibition focused on latest phase of his career in which Rodick explores—via the medium of portraiture—the relationship between the individual, family, history and time.

In Rodick’s words:

An exhibition of portraits, Casus Familia is itself a portrait—of one small family, and of time itself. The family consisted of a woman, a man, as well as the son who made these pictures: Frances, Joseph, and myself. Embedded in the images are splinters of life they sometimes shared but mostly concealed, not only to each other but also to themselves.

The threads woven through these pictures come from things large and small—from historical catastrophe to the minutely personal, from madness and decay to memory and desolation.

For me, these images are a hallucination, the kind of fevered dream another artist referred to as “more real than everyday life.” These pictures are a discharge, residues of our disquietudes around time, and time’s one true bequest: impermanence. 

The intersection between a human being, the thrust of history, and memory itself— looking through that kaleidoscope is one of one way of contemplating someone’s life. And their death as well.

Rodick attended the opening, gave a workshop, and delivered two lectures on his work, one in Buenos Aires and one in Jujuy.

The artist thanks: the Embassy of Canada to Argentina for their support without which the exhibition would not have been possible; Elda Harrington, Silvia Mangialardi, and the staff of the Festival de la Luz; Dimitri Levanoff, printer, colleague, and founder of imagefoundry, for his invaluable input; and everyone who visited the exhibition and took the time to see the work.

Thanks to the Canadian Embassy of Canada to Argentina, and in particular to their Cultural Attaché, Beatriz Ventura, the exhibition will continue to have life by touring Argentina and other Latin American countries.