Published by Spector Books. Text by jill moniz, Kathleen Rahn, Tanja-Bianca Schmidt. Conversation with Rodney McMillian, Anna Roberta Goetz.
The work of American artist Rodney McMillian (born 1969) includes painting, sculpture and installations as well as video, performance and sound works. His focus is on the role of Black people in art history and within the context of contemporary American life. In its thematic and formal rigor, following the trajectory set out by American Abstract Expressionism and socially critical Postminimalism, McMillian’s work goes far beyond this simple classification. In dealing with economic status, race, gender and tradition, it becomes a material treatise on the social fabric of the US. Aspects of his work negotiate between the body politic and a politicized body.The Land: Not Without a Politic reproduces the first European survey exhibition that ran at MARTA Herford and embeds it in the broader context of McMillian’s oeuvre and diverse social and art historical discourses.
Published by The Studio Museum in Harlem/Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsyl. Edited by Anthony Elms, Naima J. Keith. Text by Charles Gaines, Rita Gonzalez, Dave McKenzie, Steven Nelson.
For more than a decade, Los Angeles–based artist Rodney McMillian (born 1969) has worked in sculpture, painting, video and performance to explore the intersections of race, class, gender and socioeconomic policy.
Copublished by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania and The Studio Museum in Harlem on the occasion of Rodney McMillian: The Black Show and Rodney McMillian: Views of Main Street, this volume offers an in-depth examination of McMillian’s varied practice and his meditations on social systems, art history, science fiction and public policy.
In addition to contributions by Elms and Keith, McMillian’s radical use of postconsumer objects, video and painting is addressed in essays by leading figures including Charles Gaines, Rita Gonzalez, Dave McKenzie and Steven Nelson.
Published by Aspen Art Press. Text by Thomas Lax, Rodney McMillian, Heidi Zuckerman.
This monograph, published on the occasion of the Aspen Art Museum exhibition of Rodney McMillian, showcases a comprehensive survey of the artist's paintings, a section of his practice also encompassing sculpture, installation and performance. Incorporating and challenging the notion of art as social and historical critique, the works, essays and interview in this publication examine issues of race, identity and commerce in contemporary society. The book contains images of almost every painting produced by McMillian since, and including, his graduate thesis exhibition, demonstrating a fuller comprehension of the impetus of his work and an insight into the development of the artist's practice. It also features texts by Thomas Lax and Rodney McMillian as well as an interview between the artist and Heidi Zuckerman.
Born in 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina, and currently living in Los Angeles, Rodney McMillian received his BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and went on to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. McMillian's work has been exhibited at the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Herning Art Museum in Denmark, the Royal Academy in London and Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.
Rodney McMillian
Rodney McMillian