Powerful statements, modest means: Robin Rhode’s ’Borne Frieze’ opens at Lehmann Maupin
'Exercise goal achieved!' cries Robin Rhode, peering down at the Apple Watch on his wrist and then raising both arms in triumph. 'I did it – phew!' But there's no stopping him. The South African-born, Berlin-based artist is in the midst of an invigorated lap around Lehmann Maupin's Chelsea space, where his third solo exhibition with the gallery – titled 'Borne Frieze' – is on view until 21 August. Loping among the show's four installations, he punctuates rapid-fire comments with claps and snaps, his infectious personal intensity rivalled only by that of his work.
'I wanted to use the architecture of the gallery to create environments for my pieces, so I could work throughout each space, all the way down to the floor,' says Rhode, 39, pausing in the darkened front room filled by Light Giver Light Taker (all works 2015). Two giant lightbulb sculptures made of charcoal and chalk, respectively, lie on the dark grey floor, which bears the whirled traces of Rhode's dragging and pulling of their opaque forms.
Animated by strobe lights, the scene transforms a universal symbol for ideation into outsized drawing tools poised to go another round, evoking the lightbulb-illuminated coal cellar of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Inspirations for the piece include a t-shirt depicting 'Black Inventors and Their Inventions' such as Lewis Latimer, who drafted patent drawings for the likes of Alexander Graham Bell and later improved upon Edison's electric light with carbon filament bulbs. Rhode bought the t-shirt at a New Orleans supermarket in 2007 and frequently wears it while at work in his studio, he explains, 'because in Southern Africa where I'm from, the idea of a black man inventor is totally foreign'.
Unreliable light sources, however, are commonplace in his native country, where an energy crisis fueled by a floundering power monopoly has led to frequent blackouts. 'Issues in Johannesburg – the power cuts – were another point of inspiration for this piece,' says Rhode. 'Light is becoming quite scarce at the moment.'
Another room is devoted to Chalk Bike, for which the walls have been coated in black chalkboard paint and hung with white window frames that open inward to suggest an exterior scene. An actual bike, its steel frame whitewashed in chalk, stands among sketched cycles, and the floor is dotted with newspapers on which sit sneakers darkly haloed in spray paint. The work is a reference to an initiation rite that Rhode recalls from high school: underclassmen were forced to play-act with chalk drawings. 'With this particular environment, the chalk stolen from the classroom and the drawing on the concrete walls of the school now manifests itself into the actual chalk bicycle,' says the artist, who points to the newspaper pages of last week's New York Times as a way of dating the work.
Wafting through the exhibition is the deep, deliberate voice of South African poet and activist Don Mattera, whose dreamy elegy, The Moon Is Asleep, accompanies Rhode's film of the same name. Evoking both Sesame Street and surrealism, the Super 8 footage shows a boy (the artist's son, Elijah) sleeping against a wall that becomes a canvas for a shifting ocean of wavy lines and phases of the moon.
'These low-fidelity materials and techniques – black and white, chalk and charcoal, Super 8 film – are present throughout the show,' says Rhode. 'I'm a firm believer that we can make so many powerful statements by using very modest means.' Exercise goal achieved.
ADDRESS
Lehmann Maupin
536 W 22nd St,
NY 10011, New York
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Stephanie Murg is a writer and editor based in New York who has contributed to Wallpaper* since 2011. She is the co-author of Pradasphere (Abrams Books), and her writing about art, architecture, and other forms of material culture has also appeared in publications such as Flash Art, ARTnews, Vogue Italia, Smithsonian, Metropolis, and The Architect’s Newspaper. A graduate of Harvard, Stephanie has lectured on the history of art and design at institutions including New York’s School of Visual Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
-
Remembering Christopher Charles Benninger (1942-2024)
Architect Christopher Charles Benninger has died in Pune, India, at the age of 82; we honour and reflect on his passing
By Aastha D Published
-
Chanel shows its sporting colours with a bold high jewellery collection
Chanel's high jewellery collection is inspired by its founder’s athletic aesthetic
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Sarah Solis’ first furniture collection is an homage to art deco
‘Is it weird to call furniture sexy?’ Los Angeles-based designer Sarah Solis discusses her debut furniture line and new brand and store, Galerie Solis
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West
‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in Philadelphia
Artist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
By Hannah Silver Published
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connection
Wallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
By Charlotte Gunn Published