Bill Rodgers

Mapping infinity with Giotto’s stars.

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Bill Rodgers calls his exhibition at Norberg Hall in Calgary a “manageable introduction” to a larger project he began in 2019 after visiting the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. On view until Aug. 26, Galaxy after Giotto: “The Lost 93” features the Calgary artist’s sculpture, work on paper and a multitude of gold stars painted on blue discs. Collectively, they point to an expansive narrative. 

For more than seven centuries, Giotto di Bondone’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel have been revered as a masterwork. Giotto revolutionized painting as the medieval period was ending, and his work has continued to influence artists and writers, even to our time. Italy’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto recently featured 20th- and 21st-century artists inspired by Giotto, an impressive lineup that included Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Yves Klein.

Although the chapel, entirely designed by Giotto, is famous for the naturalistic fresco cycle on the walls, Rodgers was captivated by its vaulted, star-studded blue ceiling when he visited it in 1999. By chance, Vancouver artist Gathie Falk, another fan of the chapel, is also showing work related to the ceiling in Calgary as part of a touring show organized by the Toronto-area McMichael Canadian Art Collection. In Gathie Falk: Revelations, at the Glenbow until Oct. 15, curator Sarah Milroy brilliantly pairs Falk’s sculptures with paintings of starry skies she made after a 1977 visit to Padua, intimating an ineffable relationship between the finite and the eternal in Falk’s oeuvre.

Rodgers, known for multilayered storytelling and labour-saturated processes, takes a different tack in keeping with his own practice. Acts of measuring, making and remembering occupy central roles in his meditation on art, history and the representation of infinity. His project underscores the poetics of geometry and the power of mapping.

More than 100 painted discs displayed on the gallery’s walls in a beautifully proportioned wraparound configuration make up Galaxy After Giotto. Each disc, clearly handmade, bears a golden eight-rayed star on a rich blue surface textured with brushstrokes and scratches. The dimensions and pattern match Giotto’s originals as best as Rodgers could deduce from photographs on his return home. The harmonious arrangement disperses, suggesting a sentence that hasn’t ended. Indeed, Rodgers has produced more than 700 painted disks, envisioning a monumental Mercator projection on a vertical plane. 

On some discs, Rodgers stenciled letters that link Giotto with Dante Alighieri by spelling out a verse from the Inferno. They lived in Padua around the same time – Dante writing his epic poem as Giotto completed the family chapel commissioned by a prominent banker, Enrico Scrovegni. Dante relegated Scrovegni’s father to the seventh circle of hell, where usurers, those who lend money at exorbitant rates, suffer endlessly. Giotto, in his rendering of the Last Judgment on the exit wall of the chapel, depicted Scrovegni among the blessed, devoutly kneeling and offering up the exquisite chapel, his hope of atoning in perpetuity for the sins of his family.

When Rodgers first saw the chapel, he was fascinated by Giotto’s use of fixed geometry to represent the infinite heavens. He saw the measured rhythm of a hexagram star pattern on the floor as the ceiling’s orderly echo. As above, so below.

The Lost 93 memorializes the stars no longer visible on the ceiling, either because of discolouration of the fresco-secco through moisture and pollution, or due to structural strains from earthquakes, as well as nearby bombing during the Second World War. The 93 discs are carefully laid out on a low bisected platform in the gallery. Half the platform comes from Rodger’s studio worktable, while the other half reproduces a section of the chapel floor. 

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Bill Rodgers, “Blotter (Map #2),” 2022

Bill Rodgers, “Blotter (Map #2),” 2022

mixed-media collage, 24" x 18" and fragments of “Galaxy After Giotto” (background), 2021-2022, oil on board each 7.5" diameter (courtesy Norberg Hall, Calgary)

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Bill Rodgers, “Ceiling Study #2,” 2021-2022

Bill Rodgers, “Ceiling Study #2,” 2021-2022

oil on paper, 48" x 24" (left); “Working Wall,” 2021-2022 oil on paper, 48" x 24" (centre); “White Wall,” 2021-2022, oil on paper, 48" x 24" (right); lamp element of “The Lost 93,” 2022-2023, mixed media and altered objects, 96" x 24" x 11"; and “Studio Memory,” 2023, mixed media and altered found objects, 35" x 16" x 3" (far right, rear)

Additionally, Rodger’s collage, Blotter (Map #2), is a key to the making of the discs, along with four works on paper that refer to his investigations, measurements and projections. His sculptural still life Studio Memory enshrines the process, complete with a small brush loaded with precious gold paint. 

Responding to another artist’s work is a way to set up a conversation that can expand over time. With this exhibition, Rodgers’ dialogue with Giotto is off to a stellar start. ■

Galaxy after Giotto: “The Lost 93” at Norberg Hall in Calgary from June 29 to Aug. 26, 2023. 

Correction July 26, 2023, 1:19 p.m. An earlier version of this article said Rodgers visited Padua in 2019. In fact, he visited in 1999, and began his project in 2019. The post has been updated to reflect this.

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