In this monthly series, Artsy’s Curatorial team features a group of five emerging and noteworthy artists who are working in a similar style or spirit as a well-known or established artist. This month, we focus on Banksy , the infamous street artist who has turned into a global phenomenon through his trademark style and penchant for dramatic and very public presentations of his work.
Artist
Robin Rhode began engaging with the practice of street art in the early 2000s after graduating from the University of Johannesburg and the Association of Film and Dramatic Arts. Unlike many street artists, murals are a small piece of a much larger process for Rhode, whose multidisciplinary practice involves graffiti, performance, and photography. He is best recognized for his photographic series, which document a single figure interacting with, and seemingly manipulating, a painted mural. The final images are presented in a sequence, reminiscent of
Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of motion.
Born in Cape Town during apartheid, artist Robin Rhode’s work merges individual expression and social commentary, meditating on the trauma and lasting impact of apartheid on South African communities. Rhode often works with local collaborators in Johannesburg to help realize his ambitious, site-specific projects, noting to the
New York Times that “my community are my studio assistants.”
Rising in international prominence, Rhode has exhibited at major institutions including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and
The Museum of Modern Art in New York. From April through June of this year, Rhode’s work was shown as part of a two-person show titled
Power Wall with his representing gallery,
Lehmann Maupin, in Hong Kong. He currently has a solo exhibition on view at the Kunsthalle Krems museum in Austria, and is included in a forthcoming group show of works from the collection of the Perez Art Museum in Miami, which was slated to open this April.
