Family Album
Eli Ridgway Gallery is pleased to present Tim Roda: Family Album — the New York–based artist's first exposure in the Bay Area. Continuing his ongoing investigation and reconstruction of his family history, Roda exhibits black-and-white photographs made between 2003 and 2008, alongside five Super 8mm films.
Roda builds elaborate, hand-made sets from cardboard, wood, and salvaged materials, then photographs himself and his young son performing within them. Stripped-down and lo-fi — provisionally collaged together, never hermetically sealed — the pictures plumb his memories of growing up in an eccentric Italian-American Catholic family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The exhibition was accompanied by a 32-page catalog with an essay by David Hunt. Roda is a recipient of a 2008–2009 Fulbright Grant to Italy.
“Roda invites us to step into — and then through — a psychic romper room not seen since Alice tumbled into the looking glass. His stripped-down, lo-fi aesthetic is reminiscent of your grammar-school attempt at a shoebox diorama… provisionally collaged together, yes, but never hermetically sealed.”