LA-based Rodney McMillian’s practice incorporates painting, performance, video, and sculpture to explore contemporary ideas like class, race, and politics. His recent series of paintings take as their backdrop throws, afghans, bedsheets, and crocheted objects familiar to domestic spaces. By merging the gestural pours and drips of “high” culture with repurposed fabric from the “low” culture of everyday life, McMillian poses questions about where art and culture exist and for whom. These works are also slightly subversive material explorations, as the paint stretches, bleeds through, and weighs down the fabrics the artist selects for his work. McMillian’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Contemporary Austin; ICA Philadelphia; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and MoMA PS.1., among others. His work was featured in the 2015 Sharjah Biennial and the Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept, and can be found in the permanent collections of the LACMA, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and MoCA, Los Angeles, among others.
