Subtext Projects presents. . .

Liz Rodda: Tomorrows

June 3–July 23, 2011
brand 10 artspace
3418 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
817.377.3636
Opening reception: June 3, 5–9 pm
Gallery hours: Fridays & Saturdays, 1–6 pm

Checklist
Press release
Essay

Featuring Liz Rodda's most recent videos, photographs, and sculptures, Tomorrows embraces the uncontrolled spontaneities and unknowns that comprise the future, time, and life itself and eloquently renders them in a manner that is intimately personal, yet partly based in fantasy.

In her multi-part exhibition, Rodda accentuates that control is an illusion, and that chance, freewill, and causality altogether factor into life's narrative. In Rodda's Triple Possibility, for example, three filmed segments display different fortunetellers that she consulted in Beijing; each one is seen interpreting her dreams from the night before in order to shed light on her destined career path, health, and love life. What results are three divergent, yet sometimes overlapping portraits of Rodda that are, to skeptics, purely driven by speculation. By seeking multiple oracles for second and third opinions, Triple Possibility offsets the notion that a sole configuration—to be deduced through premonition—exists. Instead, the work metaphorically conjures a dice roll, emphasizing how life can offer multiple outcomes and the future is, therefore, shrouded in probabilities. As the artist states, "Mimicking the uncontrollable nature of the future, Tomorrows consists of multiple experiments in which the object of the investigation is, in varying degrees, unforeseeable. I am interested in what is beyond here and now. The work does not attempt to clarify any mysteries, but is intended to offer ways of thinking about what is currently indefinite or unknowable."

Liz Rodda earned an MFA in the Studio for Interrelated Media Program at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at venues such as Domino Gallery, Liverpool; Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin; Dumbo Arts Center, Brooklyn; 808 Gallery, Boston; Mix 18 New York Experimental Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; and the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga. Rodda is currently Assistant Professor of Media at the University of Oklahoma.

Liz Rodda: Tomorrows is organized by Alison Hearst and Leslie Murrell of Subtext Projects.

An earlier version of Tomorrows was presented by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition in the exhibition Art 365, curated by Shannon Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald's essay can be read here.

Liz Rodda
Triple Possibility, 2011
Film still from three-channel video with sound
Courtesy of the artist

Liz Rodda
The Future is Not What I Used to Think, 2011
Ink on wall
Dimensions variable

Liz Rodda
2010/2011, 2011
Inkjet prints
13 x 19 inches each

Liz Rodda
Curtains, 2011
Film still from looped video