Pan'S Opticon Studies, Five ,2009
Provenance :
Exhibited : Niels Borch Jensen Gallery & Editions, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, 3 to 6 December 2009, another example from the edition exhibited. Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art, 18 December 2016 to 10 December 2017, another example from the edition exhibited.
Literature :
Notes : Robin Rhode was born in Cape Town in 1976, embarking on his career as a professional artist after finishing studies in art and film in Johannesburg in 2000.Since 2002 he has been based in Berlin, but returns frequently to Joburg as a favourite site for his post-modern street art.Rhode has developed what might be called ‘performative drawing’ as his signature medium. Derived from graffitti, his own street drawings, originally with chalk directly onto the city’s walls which are then photographed and filmed, saw a performer (usually but not always Rhode himself) interact with a wall drawing, turning the two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional one.The drawings, erasures and redrawings his process demanded in his early work are reminiscent stylistically of William Kentridge’s charcoal drawings for film projection. His approach has shifted subsequently, and has become more focused on the possibilities of the filmic and photographic media he works in to develop his conceptual approach.The works on auction are drawn from his 2008 photocomposition Pan’s Opticon, comprising 15 photographs. The work features a black man in a black straw hat, viewed from behind, who appears to be drawing with an architect’s compass emerging from his eyes.The title of the work is a punning reference to Victorian economist and social reformer Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, which was his never-realised design for a circular prison building which allowed constant observation of prisoners without their knowledge. Rhode’s poignantly intelligent performance piece brings together a meditation on the technology of surveillance with a sensitivity to the racialised nature of such measures of control in contemporary society.Despite his avowed continued connection to South Africa (he still frequently uses Joburg as a location) and despite a healthy international auction market for his work, this is the first time a work by Rhode has appeared on the South African auction market.
James Sey
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