2012 Catalogue Archive

When South African artist Robin Rhode started high school, he was coerced into the bathroom by senior students and forced to create a narrative by physically interacting with chalk-drawn objects on the wall. An experience he never forgot, Rhode turned this juvenile game into a creative and captivating form of expression similar to stop-action films. He first developed this work by interacting with drawings on walls of the streets of Johannesburg and has now taken the practice to his studio, seen in this work where he playfully interacts with a drawn pool table in a topsy-turvey, Charlie Chaplin-esque manner. Rhode lives and works in Berlin. Given his first major museum solo show by Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 2007, Robin has since had major solo exhibitions at a number of museums around the world, including the Hayward Gallery, London; The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has participated in a number of notable group exhibitions, such as the Sydney Biennale and the Venice Biennale. His work is in a number of public collections around the world, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Sender Collection, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.