After talking with Jeff on Thursday, I started researching Robin Rhode and his performance work. Rhode has specific reasons for doing each performance and knows beforehand why he is documenting the new art piece in the desired manner and also what medium his performance will take to be completed. These are key things that Jeff suggested I become aware of with my performance work in the future. I would like to figure out why I am documenting my performances this way and why I am using the subjects and objects that I do. But in the meantime, insights into how other artists figured out their work’s reasoning is great help into figuring out how to get to that point.
Born in 1976 in Cape Town South Africa, Robin Rhode became all too aware at a young age the challenges in life that he would have living in an apartheid South Africa. The apartheid in South Africa had began around 1948 and would last until around 1994. Rhode grew up in an area of great civil unrest and this upbringing would later on be the basis of all his art work. His early education includes a National Diploma in Fine Art from Witwatersrand Technikon in 1998. Also, Robin Rhode graduated in 2000 from the African School of Film with a degree in Television and Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rhode’s work has been shown in the Perry Rubenstein Gallery, The Wexner Center for the Arts, and various countries including London, Italy, Germany, Japan, France, and Spain.
Rhode’s ideas include every day activities such as basketball, skateboarding, and gymnastics and are carried out with “his signature method of attempting to playfully transform flat renderings of every day objects into illusory three-dimensional ones through his physical interactions” (llesamni Article). In that same article, Rhode is described as one who “approaches his multidisciplinary and unconventional art practice through the high energy of street inventiveness and youth culture…often drawing on the subcultural codes of hip hop, popular sports, film, and fashion to render the every day as art.” Drawing from his background, at the root of many of his performances are ideas/issues with culture, identity, history, and the past and present socioeconomic problems in South Africa. One of Rhode’s more controversial pieces is titled Park Bench and was completed in 2000. Because Rhode grew up in apartheid South Africa there is good amount of his work that responds to what his family, friends, and he went through several years prior. The performance titled Park Bench was Rhode’s creating a life size drawing of a bench on the side of the Parliament building which is an area that is off limits to everyone except white South Africans. Dressed in dark clothing, Rhode was arrested shortly after for being found damaging private property. Another performance that is well known is titled “Color Chart.” This performance was shot from above in a stop motion animation style. The subject was lying on its side and dressed entirely in white and is said to “slowly dispatch several enemies one at a time, with bricks”. Also said, “the photography and the way it’s animated has a powerful zen-like quality, similar to that from Rhode’s Stone Flag”.
Because I have been strongly considering changing my ways of presenting my performances, I find Rhode’s stop motion very attractive but also I enjoy his performances in grid like form as well. I think that for my next performances I am going to shoot them the same way I have shot my first two performances this semester but I am going to try out presenting them in grid like form and see what feedback I can get from that method.
Clip of Rhode's Performance
Perry Rubenstein Gallery Site
Cool Hunting Website with an Article about Rhode
Walker Art Center Article on Rhode
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