Installation view
The South African born, Berlin-based artist Robin Rhode was given the inaugural exhibition at Perry Rubenstein's gallery when it opened in 2004, and he's set to have his first exhibition at a European museum when he shows at the Haus der Kunst in Munich this autumn, so much is expected of the works which fill Rubenstein's three Chelsea spaces this month.
'The Storyteller', 2006
One piece, a film entitled 'The Storyteller' (2006), easily meets those expectations. Featuring a collaboration between dancer Jean-Baptiste André, and set to music by violinist and cellist Didier Petit, it embroiders a mysterious lyrical tale of a lively sprite conjuring the life-force from a tree which is sketched on the wall behind him. Making play with wall drawings has long been Rhode's favourite strategy, but rather than set up the game, like graffiti, on an outdoor wall, as he usually does, here he has brought it inside to a theatrical setting. It has allowed him to elaborate the scene, spilling a bed of fallen leaves on the ground before the dancer as he tumbles back and forth, and it has also given him a more pliable backdrop to evolve and alter his drawing of the tree as the action unfolds. At first, the dancer seems to want to bond with the tree, but he is rebuffed; then he wants to bend and snap it; and then he grasps a stick from the ground and, as if he were conducting it like an orchestra, succeeds in unleashing a furious energy which sends leaves and tendrils coiling across the backdrop until the scene is a swirling storm of darkness.
The dancing is marvellous and puckish, the music also excellent (the strings of the cello screeching as the dancer twists the branches toward him). But it is a peculiar centrepiece for an exhibition which, overall, has a much more urban accent. Elsewhere are photo series like 'Wheel of Steel' (2006), which animates a chalk drawn record deck on a pavement, and 'Juggla' (2007), which sees Rhode in a top hat, pretending to throw balls into the air (the balls are made of splattery circles of black paint, which leave shadows on the wall as they are removed to make way for more.) And, in another gallery, there are a series of sculptures which spring once more from Rhode's visual punning. 'Spade' (2007), a golden shovel, sits against a wall piled up with charcoal, as if it were marshalling the pigment of his other artworks. And spiralling skyward at the entrance to the gallery is 'Empties (green)' (2007), a crate of beer bottles whose tops have been elongated to form a tall, waving pot of grass.
Installation view
'Candle', 2007
16 mm film
Rhode's work is consistently pungent, and the later piece is a case in point, a sculpture which somehow crosses from town to city in one easy alteration. But it is also an instance of Rhode's difficulties as, interestingly, it refers to Carling Black Label, a beer whose name lent it some caché with black South Africans during the anti-apartheid movement. Rhode seems to be saying something about the beer, about the township and the Veld - but what, exactly? One feels that uncertainty again and again from these works which, although they appear to stand in the street and state an allegiance, a local knowledge, are rather unclear beyond that. Rhode had an opportunity here to be richly and lengthily articulate, but he has ended up sounding like he got to the podium, took a deep breath, and found his notes in a jumble.
Morgan Falconer
Robin Rhode
Until 23 June
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23rd Street
New York
T: +1 212 627 8000
Morgan Falconer is a journalist and critic. After an age spent immersed in 1920s New York as a graduate student, the result now props up his computer, and today he writes about contemporary art and culture for a variety of publications including Art Review and Modern Painters.
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