Shoeglazing

From Andrew Frost…

Across just a handful of works ranging from the large to the tiny, Mark Rodda casts his magic in the punfully titled exhibition Shoeglazing. Rodda’s stated interest has been the fabrication of dark Romantic landscapes. “European painting from the pre-modern era is a primary influence, and artists like Corot, Böcklin, Turner, Delacroix, and Guardi have been my spiritual guides,” says Rodda. “The lands in these works are for the most part totally invented as I rarely base my images on actual places.”

Painting with oils on marine ply, Rodda’s work are elegant monsters hung together with bits and pieces of landscapes – mountains, trees, skies and water – that come together like a catalogue of effects. The title, again according to the artist, is a reflection of the internal, imaginary space of the process of painting, but in referencing that particular genre of music, the suggestion is of a huge wave of material that is as of itself as it is of anything else: like the swooning crush of guitars in the typical shoegaze track, Rodda’s paintings speak of themselves in their revelation of gesture and form, and somehow become everything you can see. A pretty next trick.

Until November 2
Gallery 9, Darlinghurst
Pic: Mark Rodda, Fork in the Road, 2013. Oil on wood panel 19 x 16 cm.