Robin Rhode: An artistic life that's not just black and white
The South African performance artist Robin Rhode expands the boundaries of street art. His poetic black-and-white pictures speak more than 1,000 words and are more than a political statement.
Robin Rhode - An artist with an imagination
The latest photo book "Tension" by Robin Rhode looks back at 10 years of his career as a multi-disciplinary artist. The performance artist designed an eponymous exhibition for the Italian gallery Tucci Russo, near Turin. His aim: to show the tensions in the creative process of his art. The most apparent tension is that between black and white, which can also be read as a political statement.
Untitled (Spade for Spade)
Berlin-based artist Robin Rhode uses his studio in Germany's capital city to rehearse what he will later perform on the street. Chalk, charcoal and paint spray bottles are his tools for painting and drawing. Rhodes utilizes the spray paint can to draw a link between home-grown street art in South Africa and "high" art. He is considered a rising star in the international art world.
Keys
In his 2008 work "Keys," chalk become the subject of the work itself. Rhodes runs his fingers along 10 white keys made of chalk, depicting an object - the piano - in geometric abstraction. During this period, Rhode increasingly worked in monochromatic fashion and employed abstract forms. Listening to Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, he discovered his passion for classical music in 2007.
Promenade
Andsnes played and Rhode painted along with the music. In the style of "Pictures of an Exhibition" by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, Rhode and Andsnes went on tour in 2009 with "Pictures Reframed." In the performance "Promenade," a man tries to bring order to a cascade of diamond shapes. It is an artistic reference to the Constructivism of the Russian avant-garde.
Apparatus
The objectless art of Constructivism had the character of a political movement for greater social justice in revolutionary Russia of the early 20th century. In playing on this artistic movement, Rhode - as a post-apartheid artist - wanted to point to socially relevant topics such as morality, humanity and fallibility in the area of tension between Abstraction and Realism.
Restless Mind
In "Restless Mind," Rhode plays on the subliminal tension between the body, the mind and the outer world. The geometric shapes in three-dimensional space seem to stem from the mind of the artist. Once again, there is a play here on his dual life between black and white, Abstraction and Realism - with the aim to expand the boundaries of the imagination.
Broken Windows
"Broken Windows" from 2011 is a series of 15 photographs which show a man trying to pull a kind of Venetian blind from one window to another. Walls and windows are central themes in Robin Rhode's work. Walls could symbolize a prison; windows, a view to liberty. It's all a matter of imagination, which is enhanced by the images and the gestures.
Bent Mies
"Bent Mies" also demands imagination. The bent "Mies" refer to the freewheeling chairs designed by architect Mies van der Rohe. Twelve different pictures show someone pulling on a chair, with a chord suddenly appearing in the person's hand. The more he pulls, the longer the chord becomes - and ultimately reveals itself as a metal rod coming from the chair. All the while, the chairs multiply.
Harvest I
Robin Rhode has a humorous, poetic way of telling stories in pictures. They do not always aim to make a political statement. He integrates himself into the stories through gestures and movements. When viewers look at the pictures from wall to wall as they move through the exhibition, it is as if they were watching a live movie. In this animation, Rhode harvests grain to build a bed in a cornfield.
Harvest II
In South Africa, people like to tell stories and punctuate them with expressive gestures. Rhode's stories in pictures on the wall draw viewers into another realm as in a dream. "That's the way art should be," said Rhode. "It should draw us out of everyday circumstances and transport us into a fictitious reality." Berlin-based Hatje Cantz Verlag has published the photography book "Tension."