“The dress must not hang on the body but follow its lines. It must accompany its wearer and when a woman smiles the dress must smile with her.” – Madeleine Vionnet.

In 1998, South African Artist Robin Rhode chalked the image of a bicycle on a Johannesburg city wall and then attempts to ride it. In a series of photographs, Rhodes fails to mount the “bike”, check the “tires” and “chain”, before he finally grabs the “handle bars” and “pushes” it away.

The idea for this piece titled, Classic Bike, is based on a childhood initiation rite in which senior pupils force younger students to interact with objects drawn on lavatory walls. The notion of engaging directly with a drawn representation of something as if it were an actual object – or “performance drawing” – has become Rhodes primary mode of expression for more than a decade.

Rhodes’ interest in performance and theater is clearly evident in his choice of subject matter. In the photocomposition Juggla (2007), an unknown black man in bedraggled clothes and a top hat enters the frama and appears to juggle two black balls that double as hands. Inspired in party by a famous Cape Town carnival that involves numerous street performers, Rodes clearly alludes to the problematic history of minstrelsy. Although considered to be highly racist today, minstrelsy is also regarded as an early expression of American, especially African American, theater and performance. Juggla also has European theatrical roots and is related to the Bauhaus artist and choreographer Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet (1992), where the character called the Turk, has cymbals for hands. Rhode is interested in exploring the relationship between the human body, geometry, and space. He uses a liminal, or in-between space created through the fusion of the traditionally two-dimensional field of drawing with the three-dimensionality of the body and stage to articulate his vision. This imaginative space harbors a desire to look at the world anew using humor and play to destabilize the unseemly.

In his unique and enthralling practice, Rhode deftly negotiates South African culture, the history of art, opticality, and related politics of vision. He takes the serious topics of race, politics, and visual culture and presents them in an innovative and compelling mise-en-scene that enchants as much as it enlightens. In Rhode’s words: “One can take pleasure and still remain critical at the same time”.