Published: February 05, 2009 01:22 pm      

WARNING: ‘Racing Death’ may speed your pulse.

Jonanthan Rogers was in a joking mood when he said it would be cool to have an ambulance waiting at the preview of his new exhibit — just in case somebody needs immediate medical attention.

That idea is surely over the top, but the exhibit may well get people’s hearts racing. In fact, there will be a medical testing device available to determine people’s physiological response to the preview of a new series by the venerable Niagara Falls artist.

Certainly, if anyone’s art can get people’s pulse rates up, it’s Rogers’.

His life, as documented in his past work, has been a roller coaster of experience, starting with his childhood abuse at the hands of a religious cult in Canada. Later, there was acclaim in Hollywood, where he worked as an animator and filmmaker before he sank to the depths of despair and contemplated suicide. And last, there was his revival in a 10-step program and relatively happy, or at least comfortable, landing in Niagara Falls. Some of the resulting artwork detailing aspects of his life has been shown at esteemed galleries including the Albright-Knox and the Castellani.

Now, in his early 70s, Rogers has spent the past six months creating an exhibit that expresses the breadth of his adulthood in quick time. The exhibit, “Racing Death,” will be previewed Saturday at the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center in Niagara Falls.

It will be the first look at his newest drawings and paintings, each depicting a single human in all manner of speed and expressing a gamut of emotions from joy to despair to rage and triumph.

Rogers, interviewed this week in his fourth-floor studio at the NACC, said he was told recently by a California art expert that the exhibit got viewers’ pulses racing. So Rogers tested guests in his studio.

“Seven of eight people who have sat in these chairs have checked their own pulse and said, ‘Wow, it’s noticeable,’ ” he said, gesturing to the comfortable chairs in his workspace.

In the preview of his work Saturday, he is requesting that visitors take a heart rate test before and after viewing his 38- piece collection to see if the deeply emotional series can hike a pulse rate.

“If it does,” said Rogers, with his overwhelming youthful enthusiasm, “I’m going to promote the bejesus out of it.”

To an observer familiar with his works, the new pieces look like the product of a man seeking to portray all parts of his diverse adulthood but offering one new aspect — ferociousness.

When questioned about this, Rogers seems content with the analogy that the exhibit exposes a man living fully expressed.

John Aaron Malone, an art critic from Escondido, Calif., who was the first to encourage Rogers to show “Racing Death,” compares Rogers to Jackson Pollock.

“If Pollock could have connected with his own inner turbulence with this degree of comprehension, dare we imagine that he might have lived longer than he did,” Malone wrote of Rogers.

“This is pop art with a vengeance,” Malone added.

Whatever it is, Rogers is not yet done examining his long life. There are more paintings coming, of that he is certain. “I’m trying to get satisfaction before I die,” he said.

What will satisfy him? “It’s hard to predict,” he said. “We don’t always know these things.”

One thing is for certain: Rogers will continue to try to understand his own life. “Racing Death” is only the name of his upcoming show, but it could also be his anthem.