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    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Robin Rhode, Juggla

        Robin Rhode, Juggla, 2007


        31 year-old South African artist Robin Rhode’s recent New York solo show took place in Perry Rubenstein’s three Chelsea venues. The largest space, on 23rd Street, housed the three-dimensional sculptures, a wall drawing and some photographs, while the larger of the two 24th Street spaces held photographic works, as well as a 16mm film. The smallest space was reserved for a single video projection.

        Robin Rhode’s most successful work skillfully, beautifully and intelligently conflates painting, photography, animation, performance and installation. He uses a medley of working methods to deal with issues that are often not addressed, or misaddressed, by the art world establishment. His work is overtly political without being clunky, and gracefully poetic without being cheesy.

        I am most enamored with the photographic work. It is documentation of performance, incorporates drawing, and is presented as storyboards. In the first frame of Wheel of Steel, a piece comprised of nine digital images (15.5×22″ each) arranged in a grid, we are looking down onto a turntable, drawn in chalk on what appears to be the street. In the second frame we see Rhode’s hands placing the record to be ‘played’ down on the turntable. The selection is a late-night favorite, Zamfir… with his tour-de-force LP Romance of the Pan Flute. In the frames that follow, Rhode scratches the record like a DJ, with his chalk-drawn turntable arm. The previous locations of the scratches mark the record and the ‘turntable,’ creating an increasingly complex drawing. Employing the visual strategies of animation, Rhode collapses an extended length of time into one moment, while simultaneously presenting us with the series of steps that were required to get there. The collapse of time into this non-linear form, coupled with the lo-fi materials used, suggests a high-low linkage to our digital moment and the digital divide.

        In the piece entitled Juggla, Rhode’s friend Vernon Scholtz interacts with black ‘balls’ painted on a white exterior wall, appearing to juggle them. The residues of the balls’ previous positions are visible on the wall as the juggler interacts with their changing locations. The piece is installed as a grid of 20 digital photographs, 4 across and 5 down, 21×14″ each. Drawing parallels between the idea of the juggler (minstrel, clown, beloved scamp) with that of the the artist, Rhodes acknowledges his performative role, as entertainer to the elite.

        In Candle, a 16mm looped projected film, Rhode attempts to light a drawing of a candle. The film inverts with the flicker of the flame, from light illuminating darkness to darkness defining light. The dark charcoal line of the candle turns to white chalk, while Rhode’s wool hat and skin tones flip from shades of blacks and dark grays to shades of white, illuminated by the darkness. How light defines or mis-defines darkness, what is black and what is white, and who or what controls these reads are just some of the questions that are alluded to through this beautiful and subtle film.

        The 13-minute video projection entitled Storyteller is a collaboration with dancer Jean-Baptiste Andre and composer Didier Petit. Rhode’s drawing of a tree expands and contracts, ebbing and flowing to the music, as Andre interacts with it. I wanted the piece to be successful, but felt that it fell short of its mark. The movements and the interaction of the dancer with the drawing, and his relationship to the music, did not feel specific enough. I believe the intention of this piece was sincere, but that it was not played out to an effective end by the choreography.

        I was initially nonplussed by the sculptures in the 24th Street space. They looked like ‘Art’, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but isn’t necessarily a good thing either. I’m still not sure if the information I garnered about the sculptural pieces saves them for me, or if I am just making excuses for them, but I did appreciate the works more after finding out the following information: the green carved soap bicycle lying beside a pail of soap and water, entitled Soap and Water, refers to the class status that is equated with owning a bicycle in South Africa, and to several chalk-drawn bicycle pieces that Rhode was known for earlier in his career. Spade, a gold-plated shovel in a pile of charcoal dust, brings the gold mines of South Africa right here to Chelsea, where we (maybe you?) can buy the idea of them. And in Empties, hand-blown replicas of Carling beer bottles reach towards the ceiling, their necks elongated like trees in red crates. This, too, is a South African reference, recalling the struggle against Apartheid, when an underground T-shirt designer made an infamous shirt using the local beer’s label, changing it from “Black Label, White Carling Beer” to “Black Labour, White Guilt.”

        Robin Rhode is obviously a rising star whose work has been well-lauded internationally. I imagine that the mandatory backlash against this very interesting artist’s work will come soon as well. I believe that Rhode has staying power, and will survive and thrive within the current swell of interest in his work to have a long and varied career. I look forward to his further explorations.

        A selection of Ana Wolovick's artwork can be seen on her website.

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      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery