Robin Rhode (b. 1976, Cape Town, South Africa) uses photography, performance, drawing and sculpture, and the quotidian materials of charcoal, chalk and paint, to comment on urban youth culture, postcolonial context, and society at large. His work stands out for its simplicity and formal clarity, often involving narrative and traces of the artist’s actions. He graduated from the South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Arts, Johannesburg, in 2000.
PRESS RELEASE
ISTANBUL’74 presents ROBIN RHODE, an exhibition of works by the artist, on view during the ISTANBUL ARTS AND CULTURE FESTIVAL at ISTANBUL’74’s art space in Karaköy, İstanbul.
For the exhibition, Robin Rhode presents 5 animation works, ranging from 2005-2011 which play on humor, musicality, and politics.
Paper Airplanes, 2009, referencing World War II, da Vinci, Man Ray & Duchamp as well as Ace Combat and Captain America, zeroes in on the universal subject of childhood, capturing ideas about games and innocence through the simplicity of a single camera, the wall and sky as a stage, and the basic interactions the children have with the drawing.
The theme of childhood also appears in Parabolic Bike, 2009, following a child as she rides her bike across an ever-changing curved line. The whimsical narrative depicts a young girl as she tries to ride across a parabola formed by bricks that are continually rearranged and consistently turn her around. In this concise video, set to music that oscillates between consonance and dissonance, the artist uses brick as a drawing tool and emphasizes the passing of time as shadows of a tree and telephone wires shift across the cracked, tan ground. Parabolic Bike was originally made for a 2009 performance tour in collaboration with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, for which Austrian composer and musician Thomas Larcher composed the video’s accompanying audio track.
In Untitled (Air Guitar), 2005, a super 8mm captures the artist drawing the outlines of a guitar and the speaker and amplifier system. When the drawing is complete the artist begins to interact with the drawings, mimicking the performances of air guitarists. The musicality of the artists actions contrasts to the silent film allowing for an imaginative soundtrack to exist within the viewer’s mind.
Piano Chair, 2011, features a pianist taking a machete, axe and petrol to the image of a piano, so that it bleeds paint, with both wall and picture literally having their surface gouged before bursting into flames. With its Fluxus- esque piano bashing, Rhode’s filtering of early 20th century Western abstract art through the myriad signs, codes, conflicts and desires at play in post-apartheid Johannesburg presents us with a space where form and it’s meaning is unstable, can be rethought and invented. His gestures briefly inaugurate a new world that leaves It’s chalky trace on the city streets, where one plus one equals three. Between these actions and their strange destabilizing results, the structures that govern our daily life are left behind.
Robin Rhode (b. 1976, Cape Town, South Africa) uses photography, performance, drawing and sculpture, and the quotidian materials of charcoal, chalk and paint, to comment on urban youth culture, postcolonial context, and society at large. His work stands out for its simplicity and formal clarity, often involving narrative and traces of the artist’s actions. He graduated from the South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Arts, Johannesburg, in 2000.
Given his first major museum solo show by Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, in 2007, Robin has since had major solo exhibitions at a number of museums around the world, including the Hayward Gallery, London (2008), The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2009), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California (2010). He has participated in a number of notable group exhibitions, such as this year’s Sydney Biennale, Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2011), the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), and the New Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2005). His work is in a number of public collections around the world, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida, The Sender Collection, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The artist lives and works in Berlin, Germany and is represented by Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.
