LIA RODI: ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
AUGUST 10 - OCTOBERÂ 4, 2023
Lia Rodi is an abstract artist with a background in architecture and a passion for the outdoors.
In her search for immersive and imaginary places of the physical and mental Wild, she creates beautiful, visited, and make-believe places where processing life and sensing the unseen intersect.
Rodi’s works are built of sketch-painting, melding drawing and painting as one. Taking her cues from Amy Sillman, Etel Adnan and Georgia O’Keefe, among others, the artist renders on a two-dimensional surface highly realistic, optical illusions of three-dimensional spaces and objects. Fluid and at times frenetic mark-making create an interplay of flat shapes and sculptural, biomorphic forms that challenge spatial dimensions.
Rodi spent her first four years in Korea, her formative years in Germany, and has lived all over the States, including Massachusetts, Texas, Oregon and Montana where she honed her love of the outdoors. She holds a Masters in Architecture and a Certificate in Painting from the MFA Houston where she is currently in her second year of the BLOCK XXIV program.
ABOUT THE WORK
Houston-based abstract artist Lia Rodi draws on her many years of experience as an architect and outdoors woman in her construction of bold, striking, psychological spaces. In her search for immersive and imaginary places of the physical and mental Wild, she creates beautiful, visited, and make-believe places where processing life and sensing the unseen intersect.
Rodi’s paintings are built of sketch-painting, melding drawing and painting as one. Fluid and at times frenetic mark-making create an interplay of flat shapes and sculptural, biomorphic forms that challenge spatial dimensions. Urgency and immediacy of form are reinforced by striking color combinations that defy the expected. Shifting of the abstract and figural in constant motion introduce movement, time and narrative. Anthropomorphic forms merge and dissolve into line-song through loud slashes, quiet washes, and silent flow. Complex use of color pulls the viewer into a realm of mindscapes and otherworldly landscapes. Stitching it all together, a pre-figural gesture of graffiti-like linework descends into a visual language representing primitive thought. Hovering just before reason, the line work acts as an anchor into the imaginary.
Rodi’s work summons elements of Trompe-l'œil, abstract expressionism, surrealism, and biomorphism. She is inspired by Amy Sillman, Etel Adnan, Georgia O’Keefe, Jade Fadojutimi, and Cy Gavin, among others. She seeks the primal, the natural, and the equilibrium provided by the Wild and the sublime. Whether on foot or on canvas, Rodi uses painting as a medium to traverse and summit the metaphysical, cresting both the real and the imagined.