The funny guy.

The ennobled Street Art of Robin Rhode at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Somewhere between the streets of subculture and the mountains of society mist becomes to clouds and at last to poetic schemas. Just some abstraction, the classical form of idea sketching in drawing and formats for the sky, these will be able to up you into the arts. Well, why not. Robin Rhode is a 1976 born artist, declared as Post-Apartheit-South American and since 2002 living in Berlin (Germany), who is now well known for such hypes and shows until the 6ed january 2008 important works in a solo exhibition in Munich, Haus der Kunst. Some of them look cheap – some chalk-drawings on a street, an LP laid down on it like on a real grammophone. Nine photographies show this object on the street, between reality, its games and its imagination.

Interviewed by Thomas Boutoux Robin Rhode explains, that dramatic scenes like forcing somebody to cycle on a just drawn bicycle or to blow out a candle drawn with chalk on a wall were favoured in his youth at High School, where the youngers had to do such impossible things like that. For european eyes it seems striking poetical to see teenager's brutality create such harmless dramas. But perhaps exactly the crazyness of such a kind of torture is the very aspect the post-apartheits have difficulties to cope with. Rhode's art-works capture this kind of strange dramatic poetry, even if they are enobled with the art of drawing. If you enter the exhibition's room at the Haus der Kunst, you'll stand in an darkened part of the room, in front of a huge dia-projection with slowly changing, crossfading pciture's of Rhode, who seems to throw some lights and light-plants onto the ground before him, that transforms into candle lights and at last offers the artist a place to lay down and start his eternal sleep, in a cementary scene. This little ironical drama of „romantic without reason“ is given between huge sketches on the wall in white chalk, which show musical instruments like a grand piano. The scene is supported by friendly bass sounds, fitting into the beauty of an opera's last scene. Thus, Rhode shows offensively his instruments of creating „high art“: just chalky sketches and some photographical shots, all moved merged together with simple music, motion and emotion.

Walking through the room, the visitor crosses a wall with black chalk on it, a quite automatistic sketch on it done by a scoop, this scoop completely gold-plated. The very lighty installation has about five x two meters.

Behind this, more lowly artworks are shown: photographic arrangements of nine parts each in black and white, showing something that or someone who is playing - the essential part of the action always just sketched in chalk on the ground or the wall: The grammophone or two (real and unmoved) hands with falling dices on the wall. The photographical scenes are in a way „ideas“ for animated (experimental) films. Rhode has studied film for some years (after three years at the art-academy between 1995 and 1998), and explains to have intended to stay simple and cheap in his style for the reason of independence. The main idea of representation in art and entertainment, to „have everything without anything“ (Rhode) becomes in this simple pictures shown as a principle of living culture, the poetry of „not to have“, but not as a collective style of art but as a completely individual style. Rhode tells Boutoux in the already mentioned interview, that graffiti-artists judged his work as something for a studio. His professional education distinguished him from real „street culture“ but the intention to transform something of the black subculture of „post-apartheid's“ south africa into the contents of his art separated him in a quite similar way from his white colleagues.

Some of his themes, like the messages in a bottle or hidden messages and their places in „June's window“ use such topics of distance to others with similar ideas. Again, his visual motives remind more of fairy-tales and childhood than on modern culture. Though being informed intensively about art-history, the avant-garde tradition of the 20^th century and contemporary art, Rhodes insists on classical media like drawing and black& white photography. Although it ennobles him to be acclaimed in the art scene, this is a slightly conservative gesture, perhaps showing the street-art not just to be included but to appropriate conservatism for his own purposes.

Catalogue book: Robin Rhode. Walk off.

Hrsg. Von Stephanie Rosenthal. Texts by Thomas Boutoux, André Lepecki and Stephanie Rosenthal (Curator), 184 p., 550 col. Ill. Hatje Cantz. 39,80 €

ISBN 978-3-7757-2005-2

Solo Exhibition „Robin Rhode. Walk off“

14^th september 2007 to 6ed january 2008

Mo-Fr 10 a.m. - 08 p.m., Thu 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.

Haus der Kunst

Prinzregentenstr. 1

D-80538 München

+49 89 21127 115

Report: Dr. U. Ritter

Photos: Haus der Kunst, Munich