Robin Rhode: A Plan of the Soul

Museum Haus Konstruktiv and Zurich Insurance Group Ltd are very pleased to announce the eleventh winner of the internationally renowned Zurich Art Prize: in 2018, this art prize goes to Robin Rhode (b. 1976 in Cape Town, lives in Berlin). The prize sum of CHF 100,000 consists of a CHF 80,000 budget for the production of a solo exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv and CHF 20,000 in prize money.
Rhodes oeuvre is characterized by a combination of street art, painting, performance, film and photography. The Zurich Art Prize jury was particularly enthusiastic about Rhode’s clever and playful handling of constructivist borrowings.

Robin Rhode, born in 1976 in Cape Town, has a firm footing in the international art scene. He began his career as an artist in 2003 by participating in the exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Since then, his oeuvre has been characterized by a masterful combination of street art, painting, performance, film, photography and, most recently, sculpture, whereby the medium of drawing often forms the basis. For over fifteen years, Rhode has been living in Berlin, where he develops his art in an abandoned industrial building. Nevertheless, the history and current situation of his home country South Africa still play an important role. He frequently travels to Johannesburg, to immerse himself in the South African way of life. The streets and neighborhoods there offer him optimal conditions in which to implement ideas for his photographic works.

In his exhibition a plan of the soul, Robin Rhode presents various works that he has specially conceived or adapted for Museum Haus Konstruktiv. In a performance that Rhode presented at the opening of his exhibition, he drew, using various individual car parts that are attached to a rope. After this spectacular act, there remain the masterful drawings on the wall, as well as the drawing tools hanging from the ceiling.

Robin Rhode can look back on numerous solo exhibitions, e.g. at the following institutions: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, ISR (2017); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, USA (2016); The Drawing Center, New York, USA (2015); Kunstmuseum Lucerne (in cooperation with the Fumetto International Comix Festival Lucerne); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, AUS (2013); LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2010); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA (2009); Hayward Gallery London, GBR (2008); Haus der Kunst, Munich, GER (2007).

His most important group exhibitions to date include: Busan Biennale, KOR (2017); 56th Biennale di Venezia, ITA (2015); PERFORMA 15, New York (2015); Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, GER and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, ESP (2015); Drawing Now, Albertina, Vienna, AUT (2015); Gold, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, USA (2014); 18. Biennale of Sydney, AUS (2012); Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960, MoMA, New York, (2011); Yokohama Triennale, JPN (2005), 51st Biennale di Venezia (2005) and Min(e)dfields, Kunsthaus Baselland, SWI (2004).

In addition to other awards, Rhode has received the A.T. Kearney Young Artist Award (2011) and the Illy Prize (2007).

Curated by Sabine Schaschl

Visit the exhibition on Museum Haus Konstruktiv’s website