Having spent nearly a decade on street photography with one foray into the studio, Rodick shifts both content and technique in his next series, Arena (2002-2005). In his first two bodies of work, Rodick trained his camera on the human figure and employed a variety of methods to obscure the medium’s precision, emphasizing his interest in the subjective nature of reality and the emotional gulf between human beings. In Arena, Rodick pivots inward, looking beyond our insistently opaque exteriors to reveal the chaotic interiors they guard so closely. As the name Arena implies, Rodick offers an open space, a stage for the playing out of psychic dramas. The action in this Arena is purely psychological, although (as in dreams) it is expressed in human form, an essential referent in Rodick’s work.

This time, Rodick begins with video, using it to capture footage of live models and pre-existing images, such as movies from a television screen, which he further manipulates and combines to create the prints [3 a.m. (engram); first carousel above]. As in sub rosa and Liquid City, these images are not characterized by stasis, randomly snatched as they often are from low-resolution moving pictures. Degraded and imprecise, they reinforce our sense of being outside the boundaries of normal reality. The artist again harnesses the powerful associations of the mimetic image while always working to subvert the documentary quality of photography. Here, too, the approach approximates the vivid but indistinct quality of the fantasies and nightmares that play nightly in the private theatres of our minds [reveries (dusk)].

The individual images can be disturbing to view, showing bared teeth, a mouth in mid-scream, or fingernails like claws, all of which put the amygdala in our brains on high alert [untitled diptych]. We see details of faces for the first time in this work, and, far from being blank masks, these creatures in extremis exude urgent but unspecified emotions [porneia]. Ambiguity is central to these works, encouraging the active, subjective participation of the viewer. For some, they summon brutal images of violence, torture, rape. Rodick’s aim is not to call to mind any particular scenario, but these interpretations are valid insofar as the images are constructed with the ambition of eliciting a raw, unmediated response in viewers [memento of a third floor crucifixion (re-collection, no. 1); second carousel above]. This is claustrophobic work that reminds us in vivid terms that we are each alone with our passions and demons and that sometimes the two are hard to tell apart. Rodick is most interested in bringing to the surface the feelings and sensations buried deep within us, a viscous stew of baseness, ecstasy, and fear.

Titles become prominent for the first time in Arena, but they are as elliptical as the images. Rodick delights in prodding the dark chamber of the mind with the dark chamber of the camera, so instead of revealing the artist’s intentions, the titles simply add another ripple to troubled waters. “My hope is to create a kind of sensual directness in these pictures, a bypassing of the rational self that depicts, projects, and engages primeval emotions while addressing such fundamental issues as memory, eros, mortality and pain,” the artist writes. Using words like “reveries,” “memento,” and “fragments,” Rodick urges us toward a contemplative reading of the work. Other choices, such as "Porneia," “crucifixion,” and “abattoir” are more reactionary and easily trigger a gut response, although the latter two are complicated when placed in the context of the complete titles (Memento of a third floor crucifixion (re-collection, no. 3); fragments of a celestial abattoir.

Using color for the first time in Arena, Rodick tones some prints to amplify their emotional charge with the orange hue of corroded souls or the blue of a television screen flickering at 4 am [reveries (dusk); porneia; memento of a third floor crucifixion; la pucelle), to play against a more neutral grey. He also begins using multiple images within a single composition (diptychs, triptychs, polyptychs) arranged in a linear and usually horizontal manner that mimics a line of type. The format suggests an unfolding of events as well as something that can be read sequentially, engaging a temporal dimension. The multiple panels hold our attention as we make futile attempts to construct a meaningful narrative from a hermetic loop. As the series progresses, the artist begins working with the idea of a grid of images—culminating in fragments of a celestial abattoir [second carousel above]—and moves beyond a strictly linear format.