American artist Terry Rodgers has achieved considerable fame as a creator of large-scale cinematic paintings that force the viewer to participate in a disillusioned world in which beauty, sex and money seem to bring no happiness. They evoke the confusing energy, decadence, desires, loneliness and promise of an era. He portrays the contemporary search for a meaningful life as a perpetual existential hangover.
Rodgers makes it clear that this 21st-century jet-set idea of success is only a metaphor. It is the different modes of language and perception of any era or culture that are the inevitable roots of illusion and often disillusionment. Rodgers' works underscore the complexity of human relationships in contemporary society, with all its contradictions and mediated influences.
In his work, Terry Rodgers focuses on the complexity of the world we live in - from detached to beatific - with its ramified mass of detail. His large-scale paintings often depict crowded scenes of figures with averted gazes, disconnected from both the viewer and each other.
Ideologically, themes of isolation, uncertainty, abundance, desire and lust for life emerge in his work. This comprehensive monograph provides a broad overview of more than six decades of practice, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and more, and reveals the artist's many modes of creation, each with its own autonomous authority, a driving force throughout his career.
His depiction of an imaginary leisure life is an iconic vision of the tensions and confusion of today's society. These images are not snapshots or snippets of life, but rather a compression and dissection of our unbridled imagination and mediated influences. The seductive and wondrous glamour of the outside world is contrasted with the fragility and delicacy of our inner and private lives.
Specifications
Title: Terry Rodgers: The Works 1962-2023
Author: Emiel van der Pol
Publisher: Torch
Size: 250 x 330 mm
Size: 306 pages
Language: English
Material: Hardcover
ISBN: 9789073920996
