ART-PRESENTATION: Rodney Graham-Media Studies
Rodney Graham’s works humourously consider notions of doubling and historical modes of self-representation. Graham is part of a generation of Vancouver artists, including Ken Lum, Roy Arden, Stan Douglas and also Ian Wallace and Jeff Wall, with whom he played with in the punk band U-J3RK5. These artists established the city’s reputation for photoconceptualism.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive
Rodney Graham’s breakthrough works, completed after studying at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, were a series of images of inverted trees made with a camera obscura. Later, in the ‘90s, Graham became known for appearing in short, looped films in which he parodied and problematized modern or proto-modern notions of selfhood and masculinity. For “Media Studies” his solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Zürich, Graham presents a new series of his signature photographic lightbox works. The works are allegorical and witty compositions focusing on his use of the self-portrait to explore scenarios from our collective cultural memory. In addition, two new collage series that reference Graham’s artistic personae and career as musician are displayed for the first time. In the lightbox works each image is a fictional self-portrait with the artist in costume always recognizable, portraying a vast array of characters, each scene is purposefully constructed and executed with an exceptional degree of technical expertise and humor. In “Dinner Break (Salisbury Steak)” (2017), Graham takes the guise of a ‘60s jazz drummer breaking for dinner during a performance at a nightclub, his hands poised with knife and fork above the plate as if they were drumsticks. The set for “Antiquarian Sleeping in His Shop” (2017) is drawn from visits to various antique shops around Vancouver,Graham plays a collector sleeping amongst the menagerie of objects. The “News Paper Spy” (2017) belongs to an ongoing series that utilises newspapers. Here Graham hides cartoonishly behind a newspaper with cut eyeholes, making subtle reference to Marcel Duchamp’s famous last work “Étant donnés” (1946-66) and Pablo Picasso’s appropriation of African masks. The exhibition also offers the opportunity of viewing two new collage series. They revel in nostalgia and historical pop culture. In the group of small-scale collages on board, glossy images of Dean Martin and Alain Delon ripped from magazines are pasted alongside scraps of texts and vintage adverts, then overlaid with brightly colored spray-paint. The large-scale collages are realised on canvas or linen. The collage elements are drawn from a cache of “Circus”, a ‘80s rock magazine that championed the era’s Glam-Metal bands. In some, the magazine pages are attached with gesso, in others, peeled-off revealing a transfer of the image akin to the effect used by Robert Rauschenberg. The musical references in this body of work speak to Graham’s bond with and lifelong interest in music and its history.
Info: Hauser & Wirth, Limmatstrasse 270, Zürich, Duration: 21/1-11/3/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.hauserwirth.com
