NYAB Event - Robin Rhode "Paries Pictus"

Robin Rhode "Paries Pictus"

Lehmann Maupin (201 Chrystie Street)

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Lehmann Maupin Gallery is pleased to present Robin Rhode’s first exhibition in New York in more than five years. It is also Rhode’s debut solo show at Lehmann Maupin since joining the gallery earlier this year. The artist has taken over both New York galleries to present a two-part exhibition featuring a new series of street-based photographs and an educational wall drawing intervention with Time In, a local outreach program specializing in arts education for underprivileged school children.

Robin Rhode, the South African-born, Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist, engages a variety of visual languages such as photography, performance, drawing and sculpture to create arrestingly beautiful narratives that are brought to life using quotidian materials such as soap, charcoal, chalk and paint. Coming of age in a newly post-apartheid South Africa, Rhode was exposed to new forms of creative expression motivated by the spirit of the individual rather than dictated by a political or social agenda. The growing influence of hip-hop, film, and popular sports on youth culture as well as the community’s reliance on storytelling in the form of colorful murals encouraged the development of Rhode’s hybrid street-based aesthetic. His strategic interventions transform urban landscapes into imaginary worlds, compressing space and time, as two-dimensional renderings become the subject of three-dimensional interactions by a sole protagonist, usually played by the artist or by an actor inhabiting the role of artist. Melding individual expressionism with broader socio-economic concerns, Rhode’s work reveals a mastery of illusion, a rich range of historical and contemporary references, and an innate skill for blending high and low art forms.

At 201 Chrystie Street, Rhode will utilize the walls of the gallery for a site-specific intervention entitled Paries Pictus. The artist has partnered with Time In, a New York City-based organization that specializes in arts education for kids from underserved elementary schools. A group of approximately 40 to 50 students, ranging in age from six to eight, from PS 63 in the South Bronx will be invited to use oversized crayons to color in geometric vinyl graphics applied directly to the walls by Rhode. Paries Pictus was first enacted at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy, in 2011.

This past November, Roxana Marcoci, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, invited Rhode to participate in Paris Photo Platform, an experimental platform for the critical discussion of photography. During the Vernissage, Rhode performed Darkroom, 2012. The artist’s digital animation Open Court, 2012, was also widely screened at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach as part of the fair’s Art Video and Art Kabinett programs. A forthcoming solo exhibition is scheduled for the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, in May 2013.