Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham works conceptually with the formats of the work of art. A Canadian artist of many interests, he belongs to the generation from that country who have had a major influence on contemporary art: Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas or Ian Wallace.

Graham’s work swings between conceptual reasoning in the appreciation of the world and life experience with a strong emotional charge. Indeed he is a man of many faces, at times a visual artist, at others a musician who does exhibitions or produces musical compositions. The works he shows in an artistic context also have that twofold dynamic, some with a strong element of humour and others conducive to calm reflection.

His thoughts on the appreciation of the contemporary world have brought him close to photography. For him it is the technological gaze at our environment, and he uses his work to lay bare the relation between image and reality. His photographs of trees upside down refer to the camera obscura, the physical procedure for creating “objective” images of what we see, although they appear inverted.

His work has been shown in high profile contexts, such as the Skulptur Projekte in Münster in 1987 or the Venice Biennale, where he represented Canada in 1997.

Martí Manen