Dionysus on the Del Rio's walls

By John Carlos Cantu
Ann Arbor News Special Writer

Some artists work in clear Appolonian sunshine. Their aesthetic reflects a crystalline precision, their work strives for clarity and order.
Other artists work in that Dionysian intersection between the conscious and the unconscious. Their art investigates the shadows that invade our sense of security.
Ann Arbor's Kirk R. J. Roda belongs to the later group. He has busily plumbed his considerable resources to illustrate the bold creative and intellectual depths imagination can reach when pushed to the limits. His paint stroke and line indicate he lets his work express the unexpected.
His oil painting "Quite Time," among his works on display at the Del-Rio gallery downtown, vaguely resembles the work of Francis Bacon, but without Bacon's level of horrific abstraction. In "Quite Time," Roda depicts his model as an emaciated torso suspended on its spinal column which descending from its hips to the rooted ground. While his flesh tones and oranges give he painting a stark dramatic appearance, Roda's depiction of the skeletal form is less macabre than it initially appears, and has within its gaze a touch of transcendence rather than mere existential finality.
By contrast,his graphic "Side by Side No. 2." celebrated both life and individuation within its hermetic composition. Roda employs a number of graphic techniques in this work where a barren tree is juxtaposition against a budding sprout and a massive orb hold center stage above a half a dozen figures that shift from vague articulation to blacked silhouette. Roda's psychic transformation from darkness to light creates a stunning understated epic depicting the stages of humankind poised against the mystery of life.
Likewise, "Inside," a masterful oil and acrylic mixed-media work, expands upon the range of his chosen motifs. Roda's skeletal and elongated bimorphic forms chimerically transform themselves across his working surface, while the moodiness of this painting bellies the Surrealist influence on Roda's career.
Not merely sensational, nor simply horrific, Roda's oils, rather, reflect a netherworldly fantasy effectively supplemented by his sure handed expression.