Rodney McMillian

Rodney McMillian (born 1969, in Columbia, South Carolina) is an artist based in Los Angeles.^[1] McMillian is a Professor of Sculpture at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[2]

McMillian grew up in Columbia, South Carolina.^[3] His mother worked for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and his father was a bus driver.^[4]

McMillian holds a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. He studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. During his studies, McMillian explored various mediums, including sculpture, painting, film, and installation art.

McMillian has said that his time in graduate school was an effort to broaden his artistic communication abilities. He was also influenced by musician and performer Prince, who was known for his versatility in playing multiple instruments. McMillian admired Prince's ability to control the message he wanted to send through his music, and sought to emulate that in his own work.

In 2019, McMillian's solo exhibition at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, Brown: videos from The Black Show, featured several video works originally presented in his 2016 solo exhibition The Black Show at the ICA Philadelphia. Many of the videos were created in his home state of South Carolina, while others were filmed around Dockery Plantation in Mississippi, where some claim the Delta blues was birthed.

The characters in McMillian's films wore costumes and delivered song lyrics, political sermons, and children’s stories. He set the films in a lush but hostile Southern landscape of moonlit fields and buzzing swamps.

The first West Coast presentation of McMillian’s opera, Hanging With Clarence, was staged at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Compton. His monumental installation In This Land was on view as part of the New Work series at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in early 2019. 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.

La obra de McMillian de 2010, Succulent , realizada en vinilo negro, ocupa un lugar destacado en el vestíbulo del Jardín Agnes Gund del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York. Él la ha descrito como un "portal a otro mundo", haciendo referencia a su interés por escritores de ciencia ficción como Octavia Butler y Samuel R. Delaney .

Una selección de las obras de vídeo de McMillian que abordan la historia política de los Estados Unidos se pudo ver en septiembre de 2020 en la exposición individual Rodney McMillian: Historically Hostile en el Blaffer Art Museum de Houston.

La exposición individual de McMillian de 2012, Prospect Ave, se presentó en Maccarone en Nueva York e incluyó esculturas de objetos encontrados, instalaciones específicas para el lugar, video y pinturas. ^{[ 5 ]} Presentó una exposición individual de pinturas, Recirculating Goods, en la galería Petzel de Nueva York en 2020. Pintó con látex sobre mantas o artículos de ganchillo comprados en tiendas de segunda mano y anticuarios, a veces con las etiquetas de precio aún adheridas. Las piezas exploraban cómo la clase social y los ideales han influido en la pintura de paisaje estadounidense y cómo los objetos hechos a mano se mueven a través de la economía.

La obra de McMillian se ha exhibido en el Museo Hammer de la UCLA y el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Los Ángeles , el Studio Museum de Harlem ( Nueva York), el Museo de Arte de Herning (Dinamarca), la Royal Academy de Londres, el Museo Rubell de Miami, el Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo de Boston [ 6 ^{] y el} Whitney ^{[ 7 ] .}

La obra de McMillian figura en colecciones como el Museo de Arte de San Antonio , ^{[ 8 ]} la Colección Harald Falckenberg y la Galería Saatchi . ^{[ 9 ]}

• Susanne Vielmetter Proyectos de Los Ángeles; Rodney McMillian biografía, comunicados de prensa y trabajos Información general sobre Rodney McMillian
• La galería Saatchi
• Reseña de su obra en Artcritical.com