NEW YORK, NY.- The Drawing Center presents Robin Rhode: Drawing Waves, a collaborative project by South African–born, German-based artist Robin Rhode. Rhode is exhibiting his signature stop-action photographs (in which he draws in public streets and then a performer interacts with the inscribed image) in a new photographic sequence entitled Breaking Waves, 2014–15, which whimsically depicts a young boy surfing in the sea. The illusionistic swell of the waves—articulated by Rhode’s drawn gestures onto a dilapidated city wall—reiterates the boy’s deft maneuvering of the ocean and this type of athletic physicality is echoed in the accompanying wall drawing Paries Pictus-Draw The Waves, 2015. Rhode has partnered with a group of children aged 8-10 years to create this large-scale mural of the high seas, which has been video recorded and is also on view. He began the process by attaching vinyl cutouts of seventeenth century mercantile ships to the gallery wall, and then invited the children to freely draw the surrounding body of water using giant, custom-made oil crayons. The image’s nautical motif was largely inspired by the East India Company fleet—one of the first colonialists in Southern Africa and nod to its tumultuous political and social history. Yet as a participatory artwork, Rhode offers a more hopeful outcome by bringing urban youth to the fore and demonstrating the power of the imagination. Curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Adjunct Assistant Curator.

ROBIN RHODE
Robin Rhode (b. Cape Town, South Africa, 1976) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He received a diploma in fine art from the Technikon Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in 1998, followed by a postgraduate degree from the South African School of Film, Television, and Dramatic Art, Johannesburg, in 2000. Rhode has had several solo exhibitions at internationally renowned institutions including the Hayward Gallery, London (2008), The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2009); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2010); the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2013); and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY (2014). He has participated in notable group exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2008, 2009); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010, 2005); Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany (2013); the Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL (2014); and forthcoming at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). His work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. Concurrently with Drawing Waves, Lehmann Maupin, Chelsea will present work by Rhode from June 25 to August 21, 2015.