Writing Art History Since 2002

First Title

Viewing Robin Rhode with a huge retrospective of Andy Warhol at the Hayward Gallery (Warhol downstairs, Rhode upstairs) is some indication of his meteoric rise in the international art community. On show is a survey of Rhode’s work from 2002 to the present, giving one the opportunity to chart the shifts and continuities in his work.

Robin Rhode, Rough Cut, 2008, photographic series Courtesy artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New YorkViewing Robin Rhode with a huge retrospective of Andy Warhol at the Hayward Gallery (Warhol downstairs, Rhode upstairs) is some indication of his meteoric rise in the international art community. On show is a survey of Rhode’s work from 2002 to the present, giving one the opportunity to chart the shifts and continuities in his work. This is a period which saw Rhode move from Johannesburg to Berlin and despite their obvious impressiveness, these works are also testament to relocation, to that gruelling journey of having-losing-finding locality, and the attendant searching and dislocating processes that go with that. In the early works, probably more familiar to South African viewers, the body is confidently present in carefully choreographed ‘performances’ that position the body just so – precise andaccurate – in relation to the two-dimensional surface on which it acts. As in gesture drawing where a simple line suggests some essence of the thing it represents, so Rhode manages to use the body in such a way that it suggests a precise, evocative movement, even if it is static…READ FULL REVIEW IN PRINT EDITION
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