With his research-based and socially engaged practice, Robin Rhode (b. 1976, Cape Town, South Africa; lives and works in Berlin, Germany) engages the urban landscape to create complex, symbolically rich narratives that disrupt and transform their environments.
The artist is best known for his multi-panel works that deftly combine photography, performance, wall painting, and drawing. Negotiating the urban landscape, these photographs often depict silhouetted figures interacting with carefully composed wall paintings that the artist paints in public spaces, most often in the city of Johannesburg. In each succession of photographs, the choreographed movements of the individual or group appear to alter the two-dimensional renderings, compressing space and time and morphing the urban landscape into a fictional storyboard. Using the medium of photography to capture his painted and performative actions, Rhode disrupts the fixity of the wall, rendering it a mobile substrate that can be transported into a variety of contexts.