Jan. 13-Feb. 3, 2014: 'Capriccios of the Heart'

Exhibition: "Capriccios of the Heart," photographs and film by Tim Roda Show dates: Jan. 13-Feb. 3, 2014 Location: Kimura Gallery (Fine Arts Building, Second Floor) Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Artist biography: b. 1977, Lancaster, Pa.

Tim Roda's art career began at Pennsylvania State University, where he graduated in 2002 with a B.F.A. He received his M.F.A. in 2004 from the University of Washington, Seattle. There his work developed a language that casually travels within arenas of installation, photography and performance. The props or devices he includes in the images are made of paper, wood, tape and clay, often used for their disposable or re-usable nature. He uses photography, not for the love of the technical aspects of the medium, but because of its properties, both abstract and physical, that best depict his vision of life and art.

Roda is represented by the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Wash.; Gasser Grunert in New York, N.Y.; Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York, N.Y.; Galerie Michael Janssen in Berlin, Germany; Nasim Weiler Contemporary in Hamburg, Germany; and the Angell Gallery in Toronto, Canada. In 2008, he received a Fulbright Award to study photography in Italy. He also received a Kennedy Artist in Residence Award at the University of South Florida during the spring of 2012.

His work is in the following public collections: Bard College Museum, Hessel Foundation (New York, N.Y.); The Rose Museum, Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.); Seattle Art Museum and the Henry Art Museum (Seattle, Wash.); Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, Texas); Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, Ill.); Essl Museum, (Klosterneuburg, Austria); and the Centro Cultural Andratx (Mallorca, Spain). Roda has taught art for the Brooklyn Arts Center, New York University, Purchase College (SUNY), Hofstra University, University of Washington and Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.

Artist's statement: "I started using photography, not for the love of the technical aspects of the medium, but because I appreciate its properties, both abstract and physical. It is the medium that best allows me to depict metaphors of family history that might find 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 for me, my wife, Allison, and son, Ethan.

Every scene from this body of work begins as a theatrical and visual concept that is then played out by my family. Although we three 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 for the viewer to create personal associations with their own history.

My son's ever-present, central role in the work serves as an identifiable entry point for the viewer. Allison's role is to click the shutter, though she occasionally appears in the images. Over time, we have developed an unspoken language intuiting how we progress from my initial concept to the finished image.

Overall, 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.

Technically, I could print what photographers perceive as a perfect picture, but I would consider that to be imperfect. The seeming imperfections that one sees on the physical print reflect the constructions within the photograph. The props or devices I include in the images are made of found materials-paper, wood, tape and clay. I use them because they are not precious but malleable and re-usable. I have decided to approach my materials and processes in an improvisational manner befitting of my personal history rather than jeopardize the integrity of my art by conforming to more formal standards.

I understand that for people from photography backgrounds the technique of my work can distract from the content. When asked about the irregularity of the margins in my work, I explain that there is a relationship between the apparent contempt for the materials and my reverence for the subjects of the imagery. My work, from the content of the image to my treatment of the paper, is largely about metaphor. The rough edges, erratic fixer stains and haphazard tonal range are suggestive of the working class way of life my grandfather experienced when he came to America as an Italian immigrant. This set of values was passed down to my father and then to me with all of its eccentricities.

For example, my grandfather and father built our family home, tree fort, swimming pool and decks out of the same scrap and recycled wood with which they built our chicken coop. My father just built a two-car garage whose sides look like a patchwork quilt of various wood surfaces and textures. Although I used to question my father and grandfather's way of building and 'fixing' things, I now recognize and embrace this style not simply as a legacy but as a hereditary fingerprint. I would consider my studio to be a 'hand-built' garage where I teach and pass down this tradition of creativity in my own way to my son, Ethan."

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