Skip to content

Rodney McMillian

The Land: Not Without a Politic

March 16June 16, 2024

Marta Herford Museum

This image illustrates a link to the exhibition titled Rodney McMillian<br><i>The Land: Not Without a Politic</i>

Installation photo credit: Hans Schröder 

 

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to announce Rodney McMillian’s solo exhibition The Land: Not Without a Politic at Marta Herford in Herford, Germany. The exhibition opens March 16 and runs through June 16, 2024.

Curated by Kathleen Rahn, the director of the Marta Herford, the exhibition features key works from throughout Rodney McMillian’s renowned practice. The Land: Not Without a Politic demonstrates a sustained examination of the artist’s oeuvre within a framework of socially critical Post-Minimalism and highlights his exposure of the fissures in the social fabric in the United States. The exhibition includes McMillian’s sculptural installations shaft (2021-22), Untitled (4443 Prospect Ave) (2009), Untitled (The Supreme Court Painting) (2004-06); films Preacher Man II (The Pitfalls of Liberalism) (2017-21); A Migration Tale (2014-15); Untitled (the Great Society) (2006); and several recent landscape paintings, among other works.

Rodney McMillian addresses intersections of power, race, class, and culture in paintings, sculptures, installations, and video. Reflecting the conviction that history is always present, McMillian explores the impacts of historical events on policy, the effects of politics on the body, and the experience of class and race in contemporary U.S. society. He uses political texts and found, often domestic, materials such as house paint, cast-off furniture, and thrifted bedsheets, among others, to create works that powerfully address political urgencies.

About the artist

Rodney McMillian was born in 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina, and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. McMillian was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennale, Quiet as It’s Kept, curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards; the 2021 Prospect.5 New Orleans: Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, curated by Naima Keith and Diana Nawi; and he was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennale. In 2020, the artist had a solo exhibition, Historically Hostile at the Blaffer Museum in Houston, Texas. In 2019, McMillian had solo exhibitions at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, Videos at the Black Show and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Work: Rodney McMillian. He received the Contemporary Austin’s first Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize in 2016, and the resulting solo exhibition Against a Civic Death was on view in 2018. In 2016, McMillian had solo exhibitions at the ICA Philadelphia, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and MoMA PS.1. Each of these exhibitions highlighted a particular set of material and conceptual concerns in McMillian’s multivalent practice. The MoMA PS.1 exhibition, Landscape Paintings originated at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado in 2015 and was curated by Heidi Zuckerman. McMillian’s work was featured in the 2015 Sharjah Biennial, curated by Eungie Joo.

His work has also been included in group exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery, London, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA; the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among many others. His work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Stadtisches Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Rodney McMillian is represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles and Petzel, New York.