Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Ana Torfs, When You Whistle, It Makes Air Come Out, 2019; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1997 - Apology for study done in Tuskeegee (US Public Health Service Syphillis Study at Tuskeegee), 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Clockwise from front: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017; Stephanie Dinkins, Conversations with Bina48: Fragment 11, Fourth Mirror, 2018; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Clockwise, from front left: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1997 - Apology for study done in Tuskeegee (US Public Health Service Syphillis Study at Tuskeegee), 2020; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Crystal Z Campbell, Friends of Friends (Six Degrees of Separation), 2013; Crystal Z Campbell, Portrait of a Woman I and Portrait of a Woman II, 2013; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Crystal Z Campbell, Portrait of a Woman I and Portrait of a Woman II, 2013. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Stephanie Dinkins, Conversations with Bina48: Fragment 11, Fourth Mirror, 2018; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Ink, acrylic, latex, and vinyl on paper mounted on canvas; 53 x 90 inches. Collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Clockwise from left: works by Jean-Charles de Quillacq; Adham Faramawy, Skin Flick, 2019–2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Front to back: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Adham Faramawy, Skin Flick, 2019–2021. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Francis Upritchard, Liar, 2012. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Rodney McMillian’s works deftly combine concept, history, material, and process to address the relentless ubiquity of racialized violence in America. The five recent works on view probe the relationship between American scientific and artistic progress—its dubious claims to modernism—by recentering the Black body. Three works on paper caption Abstract Expressionism, troubling artistic orthodoxies by relocating its performative esthetic within a wider, racialized body politics. The other two works, monumental black monochromes, invoke Minimalism as they elaborate on both the atrocities that have plagued Black bodies at every scale, from cell to community, and the rich pleasures of resistance. For instance, the suspended, monumental, sprawling black sculpture Untitled (Entrails) issues a subtle challenge to the exhibition space’s pillared grid, escaping its oppressive containment with metabolic fugitivity … just as thick acid green, yellow, and black pigments converge to propel themselves off the edge in the Mississippi Appendectomy.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017; Ana Torfs, When You Whistle, It Makes Air Come Out, 2019; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Smoking Bleaching, 2022. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Jeneen Frei Njootli, Fighting for the title not to be pending (detail), 2021; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Celina Eceiza, La vida terrenal reconquista al soñador [Earthly Life Reconquers the Dreamer] (detail), 2022; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Jeneen Frei Njootli, Fighting for the title not to be pending (detail), 2021; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Smoking Bleaching, 2022; Lucas Michael, Estás equivocado pero tienes razón [You are wrong but you are right], 2021; Celina Eceiza, La vida terrenal reconquista al soñador [Earthly Life Reconquers the Dreamer] (detail), 2022; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020. Fabric, chicken wire, acrylic, and meat hooks; 118 x 22.5 x 52.5 inches. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine (detail), 2021; Lucas Michael, HERONABOAD and The hand that whirls the water in the pool, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine, 2021; Lucas Michael, HERONABOAD and The hand that whirls the water in the pool, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Eglė Budvytytė, Songs from the Compost: Mutating Bodies, Imploding Stars, 2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine (detail), 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Bridget Moser, When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left (back), 2021; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Rodney McMillian, Between the Sun and the Moon (For H. A. Washington), 2020. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Rodney McMillian’s works explore the complex and fraught connections be-tween history and contemporary culture with a focus on American politics and modernist art traditions. The three works on view probe the relationship between American scientific and artistic progress—its dubious claims to modernism—by centering the Black body.
The monumental, sprawling sculpture Untitled (Entrails) evokes the aftermath of an evisceration or a lynching. Anchored in the ceiling of the CFA Gallery’s tall and bright-white lightwell, a long silver chain holds rusty meat hooks that suspend a looping black channel—a dark intestine enshrined in white. As it slithers into the adjoining space, Untitled (Entrails) is both an irresistible invitation and a subtle threat. Exiting the gallery, visitors encounter Between the Sun and the Moon (For H. A. Washington), a text and/as image nod to Harriet A. Washington’s important book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Between the Sun and the Moon outlines a chronology of the violence perpetrated by the American state on its Black citizens in the late-twentieth century.
At Anderson Gallery, the large black monochrome Cell I invokes Minimalism as it elaborates on both the atrocities to which Black bodies have been subjected at every scale, from cell to community, and the rich pleasures of resistance.
Rodney McMillian’s work explores the complex and fraught connections between history and contemporary culture with a focus on American politics and modernist art traditions. His paintings, sculptures, videos, and performances have been featured in many exhibitions, including the recent solos The Brown: Videos from The Black Show, Underground Museum, Los Angeles (2019); and In This Land, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019). His work has been the subject of major presentations at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2016); MoMA PS1, New York (2015); Aspen Art Museum (2015); and the Kitchen, New York (2008). In 2016, McMillian received the Contemporary Austin’s inaugural Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize and the resulting solo exhibition Against a Civic Death was on view in 2018. Most recently, McMillian's monumental painting, shaft (2021–2022) has been installed in the iconic stairwell at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial. McMillian is a faculty member in the Department of Art at the School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Jayne Wilkinson, “I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” C Magazine 154, Spring 2023, 78-79.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Meret Kelsey, “UB Art Galleries’ latest exhibition explores the absurdities of the human body,” The Spectrum, November 17, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco,“I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.
REVIEWS
Yxta Maya Murray, "Rodney McMillian:Body Politic," Brooklyn Rail, November 2020.
Natalie Haddad, "Rodney McMillian Deftly Treads the Line Between Politics and Aesthetics," Hyperallergic, October 30, 2020.
Jennifer Piejko, "The Crushing Weight of the Comfortable: Rodney McMillian," Mousse, October 13, 2020.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Ana Torfs, When You Whistle, It Makes Air Come Out, 2019; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1997 - Apology for study done in Tuskeegee (US Public Health Service Syphillis Study at Tuskeegee), 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Clockwise from front: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017; Stephanie Dinkins, Conversations with Bina48: Fragment 11, Fourth Mirror, 2018; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Clockwise, from front left: Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1997 - Apology for study done in Tuskeegee (US Public Health Service Syphillis Study at Tuskeegee), 2020; Berenice Olmedo, Akro-Bainein, 2020; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Crystal Z Campbell, Friends of Friends (Six Degrees of Separation), 2013; Crystal Z Campbell, Portrait of a Woman I and Portrait of a Woman II, 2013; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Crystal Z Campbell, Portrait of a Woman I and Portrait of a Woman II, 2013. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 1.
Left to right: Stephanie Dinkins, Conversations with Bina48: Fragment 11, Fourth Mirror, 2018; Francis Upritchard, Desert Hippie, 2018; Rodney McMillian, Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Mississippi Appendectomy, 2020. Ink, acrylic, latex, and vinyl on paper mounted on canvas; 53 x 90 inches. Collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Clockwise from left: works by Jean-Charles de Quillacq; Adham Faramawy, Skin Flick, 2019–2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Front to back: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Adham Faramawy, Skin Flick, 2019–2021. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 2.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Francis Upritchard, Liar, 2012. Image courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; photo: Colin Conces.
Rodney McMillian’s works deftly combine concept, history, material, and process to address the relentless ubiquity of racialized violence in America. The five recent works on view probe the relationship between American scientific and artistic progress—its dubious claims to modernism—by recentering the Black body. Three works on paper caption Abstract Expressionism, troubling artistic orthodoxies by relocating its performative esthetic within a wider, racialized body politics. The other two works, monumental black monochromes, invoke Minimalism as they elaborate on both the atrocities that have plagued Black bodies at every scale, from cell to community, and the rich pleasures of resistance. For instance, the suspended, monumental, sprawling black sculpture Untitled (Entrails) issues a subtle challenge to the exhibition space’s pillared grid, escaping its oppressive containment with metabolic fugitivity … just as thick acid green, yellow, and black pigments converge to propel themselves off the edge in the Mississippi Appendectomy.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 05, 2013–2017; Ana Torfs, When You Whistle, It Makes Air Come Out, 2019; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Smoking Bleaching, 2022. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Jeneen Frei Njootli, Fighting for the title not to be pending (detail), 2021; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, The Blinding Light 12, The Blinding Light 08, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Celina Eceiza, La vida terrenal reconquista al soñador [Earthly Life Reconquers the Dreamer] (detail), 2022; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Jeneen Frei Njootli, Fighting for the title not to be pending (detail), 2021; Mounir Fatmi, The Blinding Light 20, 2013–2017. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Anderson Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Smoking Bleaching, 2022; Lucas Michael, Estás equivocado pero tienes razón [You are wrong but you are right], 2021; Celina Eceiza, La vida terrenal reconquista al soñador [Earthly Life Reconquers the Dreamer] (detail), 2022; Rodney McMillian, Cell I, 2017–2020; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020. Fabric, chicken wire, acrylic, and meat hooks; 118 x 22.5 x 52.5 inches. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine (detail), 2021; Lucas Michael, HERONABOAD and The hand that whirls the water in the pool, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine, 2021; Lucas Michael, HERONABOAD and The hand that whirls the water in the pool, 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Eglė Budvytytė, Songs from the Compost: Mutating Bodies, Imploding Stars, 2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Ryan, 2021; Rodney McMillian, Untitled (Entrails), 2019–2020; Lynne Marsh, Atlas_Gustine (detail), 2021. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Center for the Arts Gallery, 1st Floor.
Left to right: Bridget Moser, When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left (back), 2021; Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Mégot [Cigarette Butt], 2016; Rodney McMillian, Between the Sun and the Moon (For H. A. Washington), 2020. Image courtesy of University at Buffalo Art Galleries; photo: Biff Henrich/IMG-INK.
Rodney McMillian’s works explore the complex and fraught connections be-tween history and contemporary culture with a focus on American politics and modernist art traditions. The three works on view probe the relationship between American scientific and artistic progress—its dubious claims to modernism—by centering the Black body.
The monumental, sprawling sculpture Untitled (Entrails) evokes the aftermath of an evisceration or a lynching. Anchored in the ceiling of the CFA Gallery’s tall and bright-white lightwell, a long silver chain holds rusty meat hooks that suspend a looping black channel—a dark intestine enshrined in white. As it slithers into the adjoining space, Untitled (Entrails) is both an irresistible invitation and a subtle threat. Exiting the gallery, visitors encounter Between the Sun and the Moon (For H. A. Washington), a text and/as image nod to Harriet A. Washington’s important book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Between the Sun and the Moon outlines a chronology of the violence perpetrated by the American state on its Black citizens in the late-twentieth century.
At Anderson Gallery, the large black monochrome Cell I invokes Minimalism as it elaborates on both the atrocities to which Black bodies have been subjected at every scale, from cell to community, and the rich pleasures of resistance.
Rodney McMillian’s work explores the complex and fraught connections between history and contemporary culture with a focus on American politics and modernist art traditions. His paintings, sculptures, videos, and performances have been featured in many exhibitions, including the recent solos The Brown: Videos from The Black Show, Underground Museum, Los Angeles (2019); and In This Land, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019). His work has been the subject of major presentations at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2016); MoMA PS1, New York (2015); Aspen Art Museum (2015); and the Kitchen, New York (2008). In 2016, McMillian received the Contemporary Austin’s inaugural Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize and the resulting solo exhibition Against a Civic Death was on view in 2018. Most recently, McMillian's monumental painting, shaft (2021–2022) has been installed in the iconic stairwell at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial. McMillian is a faculty member in the Department of Art at the School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Jayne Wilkinson, “I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” C Magazine 154, Spring 2023, 78-79.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Meret Kelsey, “UB Art Galleries’ latest exhibition explores the absurdities of the human body,” The Spectrum, November 17, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco,“I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.
REVIEWS
Yxta Maya Murray, "Rodney McMillian:Body Politic," Brooklyn Rail, November 2020.
Natalie Haddad, "Rodney McMillian Deftly Treads the Line Between Politics and Aesthetics," Hyperallergic, October 30, 2020.
Jennifer Piejko, "The Crushing Weight of the Comfortable: Rodney McMillian," Mousse, October 13, 2020.