Uta Ruhkamp

Mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth—speech, pain, and screech—eating, swallowing, spouting off, and spitting—lust and passion: the oral cavity is an extremely stimulating zone of the body, in the truest sense of the word. Science and medicine are not the only fields that have investigated it, though. From antiquity to the present day, art and cultural history have done the same. The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has pursued the wide-ranging path of this motif’s history in order to present the first comprehensive show about the mouth in the fall of 2020. The companion publication offers thematically dense essays that not only allow the reader to delve into the topic, but also go far beyond the exhibition itself. The mouth, its inventory and abilities, are closely examined through film history, ethnology, literary theory, and architecture.

Robin Rhode’s trademark is the wall. His works are influenced by urban music culture, film, popular sports, youth culture, and traditional South African storytelling. They are created in the public space, on walls. It’s not about the statement that he leaves behind on the street, though—it’s about the pro-cess. Hence, in his visual short stories he captures the links between drawing, performance, and sculpture, step by step. No body without a line, no line without a body. With drawing as his starting point, he develops increasingly complex photo-graphic works, digital animations, performances, sculptures, and works on paper, which comprise a content-related balanc-ing act between South African history, culture, mindset, signs, and codes and the abstract language of European-Ameri-can art history. This richly illustrated catalogue accompanies Rhode’s first solo show in twelve years in Germany. Besides pictures of the art itself, the book also contains an interview, an introductory essay, and poems by South African authors, to which his work often refers.