Rod Faulds

BIO

Rod Faulds is a seasoned museum professional, educator and artist. As an undergraduate he studied photography and printmaking. He holds an MA in Exhibition Design and a Certificate in Museum Studies from California State University, Fullerton. For 22 years he served as Director, University Galleries at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. From 1980 – 1997 he held upper administrative and design positions at the Williams College Museum of Art and two New York museums, the Guggenheim and The Brooklyn Museum. At FAU Faulds employed this experience to produce innovative exhibitions, often with outside curators and provided a learning laboratory for training in exhibition administration, design, production and arts education. In 2009 Faulds began employing digital photography to create abstract works and recently he has created installations for his photo-based images.

In 2022 Faulds created “Hybrid Detritus” an installation / solo exhibition at Miami Dade College, Padron Campus. In 2014 he had a solo exhibition at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center, Hollywood, Florida. His work has been featured in several curated group exhibitions including a 2018 two person show with Isabel Gouvelia at FAU’s Theater Lab Gallery. In 2019 he created an installation for his works for “Polyopia” at the Arts Warehouse, Delray Beach, FL.

STATEMENT

My practice revolves around making images that employ photography and grid structures to make abstract works that function visually and conceptually somewhere between photography and painting. These images skirt between figuration and abstraction while retaining many qualities inherent to photographic reproduction.

Most of my constructed images feature mundane subjects photographed from my daily surroundings in suburban and urban settings. The works are hybridized landscapes made from several views of a distinct or contiguous location(s). Multiple images may be combined for visual effect, but most are first depictions of a defined site. Camera captured images are combined, repeated and mildly altered to emphasize and activate aspects of unremarkable subjects. I like to think that my images evoke the sense that there are worlds beyond our pragmatic experience, there’s something hiding in the cracks, and/or I’m making something from existing matter that many consider to be nothing.

I believe we are living in an existential quandary evidenced partly by the problem of human waste and pollution among other pending man-made catastrophes. My unromantic subjects attempt to question visual perception, photographic representation, image alteration while obtusely channeling concerns I have about the state of our world. By building images that suggest and question infrastructure or the under belly of things, I seek to problematize modern human’s penchant for material possessions and a seeming inability to focus creativity and resources on the world’s most pressing problems.