Davis Rhodes

Installation view, Untitled ‘12, Société, Berlin, 2012
Davis Rhodes describes painting as a dynamic form of agreement, a relation that is always being made and unmade. He variously takes up traditional as well as industrial and graphic display materials, engaging both the grammar and the immediacy of the painted surface, often at the limits of its legibility. What may appear as a threshold of dematerialization – a ‘surface without support’ – opens onto a reciprocal somatic exchange, an immanent mode of encounter and attunement.
Davis Rhodes (b. 1983) lives and works in New York. His solo shows include Team Gallery, New York; Office Baroque, Brussels; Société, Berlin; and Casey Kaplan, New York. Rhodes participated in group shows including Cressman Center for Visual Arts, Louisville; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin; MuZee Oostende, Ostende; and The Kitchen, New York.
New Works
Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2020, Enamel on paper, 216 × 147.5 cm / 85 × 58 in
![Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020](/media/images/2020_hyle_02.width-2560.jpg)
Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2020, Enamel on paper, 216 × 152.5 cm / 85 × 60 in
![Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020](/media/images/2020_hyle_04.width-2560.jpg)
Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020

Detail view
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2020, Enamel on paper, 216 × 152.5 cm / 85 × 60 in
![Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020](/media/images/2020_hyle_06.width-2560.jpg)
Installation view, New Works, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens, 2020

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2019, Digital photographic print, 15 × 10 cm / 6 × 4 in
Davis Rhodes
Office Baroque, Brussels, 2017

Installation view, Davis Rhodes, Office Baroque, Brussels, 2017

Installation view, Davis Rhodes, Office Baroque, Brussels, 2017

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2017, Enamel on paper, 216 × 152.5 cm / 85 × 60 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2017, Enamel on paper, 216 × 152.5 cm / 85 × 60 in
Untitled ‘15
Société, Berlin, 2015

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2015, Oil on canvas, 183 × 132 cm / 72 × 52 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2015, Oil on canvas, 170 × 124.5 cm / 67 × 49 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2015, Oil on canvas, 100.5 × 80 cm / 39 1/2 × 31 1/2 in
Untitled ‘12
Société, Berlin, 2012

Installation view, Untitled ‘12, Société, Berlin, 2012

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2011, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Installation view, Untitled '12, Societe, Berlin, 2012

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2011, Enamel and tape on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Installation view, Untitled '12, Societe, Berlin, 2012

Detail view
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2011, Enamel and tape on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2006 / 2012, Video, 5 min 27 sec

Video still
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2006 / 2012

Video still
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2006 / 2012
Trojan Horses
Bugada Cargnel, Paris, 2012

Installation view, Trojan Horses, Bugada Cargnel, Paris, 2012
Click here to read the full interview, Davis Rhodes in conversation with Andrea Alessi
ARTSLANT INTERVIEW 2012
Andrea Alessi: The term “painting” sometimes appears in quotations when applied to your work. I find myself asking this of artists a lot, but the answer can be quite revealing: Do you describe yourself as a painter? Do you find there are challenges or disclaimers attached to that label?
Davis Rhodes: Absolutely I’m a painter. Painting is a symbolic modality – a particular form of agreement, a relation that is always being made and unmade. It’s not a "subject". There are instances, at given times, of commitment on a material level and to a mode of relation. That’s all. I’m painting with an insistence on immanence and transformation. I’m working with materialist abstraction, its extension in the social field and the way "medium" and mode of address become unstable as a result.
The effect of the pieces, their presence, is always coextensive with this bastard materiality, their fragility, their capacity to be affected. The pieces are appearances, always under threat. The surface has no support. There’s no recourse. It’s only surface. I’m interested in this groundlessness – it’s where I find myself working...The pieces are correlatives to a condition of being. Their 'body' or their 'standing' can't be taken for granted.
Andrea Alessi: Can you talk a bit about your process? Your materials seem to have an agency of their own (the not entirely predictable behaviors of cut vinyl and paint-saturated foamcore, for example). Do they ever rebel?
Davis Rhodes: I’d prefer not to speak to my studio process in detail right now, though I appreciate you saying the materials have an agency of their own. It’s true. They’re not passive. There’s lots of chance in the process.
Andrea Alessi: Installations of your work have gone from recalling the horror vacui of the sign-laden urban landscape, to a systematically staggered layout, to the most recent pared-down set up where each painting gets a lot more breathing room (in your show at Team). How integral are these installation decisions to the meaning of your work and what do they have to say about the autonomy of the artwork?
Davis Rhodes: The recent show at Team in NYC worked through presence, porosity and displacement. The pieces are super sensitive surfaces, registering traces of life elsewhere. That elsewhere haunted the immediacy of the pieces. It also gave them specificity. That’s why the work was installed with lots of space – to put pressure on its being-in-the-world, its capacity for enchantment.
The pieces have no more or less autonomy than we do as subjects. That’s in a way what the [number] 1 is – the conditionality of singularity, but presence nonetheless, and very specific operations in different contexts. The point is just what it does. Nothing inside the pieces is meaningful. It’s about staging an unstable presence – of the works and of the viewer.
Andrea Alessi: So, for you, the encounter is paramount?
Davis Rhodes: Yes, the encounter, and the reality of the work.
Untitled '12
Team, New York, 2012

Installation view, Untitled '12, Team, New York, 2012

Installation view, Untitled '12, Team, New York, 2012

Installation view, Untitled '12, Team, New York, 2012

Installation view, Untitled '12, Team, New York, 2012

Installation view, Untitled '12, Team, New York, 2012
INTERVIEW MAGAZINE 2012
Quietly and concisely, Davis Rhodes tweaks perception using his ephemeral hardedge abstractions. With Untitled '12, his second solo show at Team Gallery, which opens tonight, the New York-based Rhodes presents nine new foamcore works. These industrially produced materials lean on the wall, lightweight but heavy with presence. Rhodes describes the feeling in the room as "total freedom from hierarchy, alienation or the pressure of identity."
We see hints of Rhodes's hand in the flat paint color fields. Five of the foams boards are warped by the application of water-based paint. Others seem almost raw. "There's nothing pure here. Just artificial surfaces, illusionism," says Rhodes referring to the show not being a minimalist exercise but rather radical transformation of the materials he is working with. The nine panels stand poetically, vaguely referring to their materiality, resisting Rhodes's influence on their surface. "I work with painting to pressurize everything—whether the pieces even stand at all, as pieces, has everything to do with getting a lot from almost nothing, with no stable support to fall back on."
Rhodes' departure point for the show is a large white "1" painted on to foamcore, which was shown on the street in Brooklyn in 2008 and inspired the body of work which made up his first show at Team, "Untitled '09," a colorful series of marquees, hand gestures and the "1" cut out of painted vinyl. Three years later, Rhodes work is stripped down, completely void of references. Rhodes says, "It's close to the ground, realist, but very open and mutable."

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2011, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, White Number One, Jefferson Street, 12.19.08, 2008, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2010, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2011, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 244 cm / 96 × 96 in
Davis Rhodes
Office Baroque, Antwerp, 2010

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2010, Enamel on vinyl, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2010, Enamel on vinyl, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in
Untitled '09
Team, New York, 2009

Installation view, Untitled '09, Team, New York, 2009
Davis Rhodes – Gallery C
Team, New York, 2008

Installation view, Davis Rhodes – Gallery C, Team, New York, 2008
Davis Rhodes Gallery III
Casey Kaplan, New York, 2007

Installation view, Davis Rhodes Gallery III, Casey Kaplan, New York, 2007

Installation view, Davis Rhodes Gallery III, Casey Kaplan, New York, 2007

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2006, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2006, Enamel on foamboard, 244 × 122 cm / 96 × 48 in

Davia Rhodes, Untitled, 2006, Enamel and tape on foamboard, 91.5 × 61 cm / 36 × 24 in
Davis Rhodes
Solo exhibitions
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2020
Ύλη[matter]HYLE, Athens
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2017
Office Baroque, Brussels
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2015
Untitled ‘15, Société, Berlin
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2012
Untitled ‘12, Société, Berlin
Untitled ‘12, Team Gallery, New York
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2010
Office Baroque, Antwerp
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2009
Untitled ‘09, Team Gallery, New York
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2008
Gallery C, Team Gallery, New York
White Year, ACME and Sister, Los Angeles
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2007
Davis Rhodes Gallery III, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
Group exhibitions
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2017
Painting in the Network: Algorithm and Appropriation, Cressman Center for Visual Arts, Louisville
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2013
39 Great Jones, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
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2012
39 Great Jones, New York
Trojan Horses, Bugada & Cargnel, Paris
Ghosts Before Breakfast, White Flag Projects, St. Louis
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2011
A Hole is to Dig, Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp
Group Exhibition, Curated by Clayton Deutsch, Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami Beach
Gruppenausstellung 2, Max Hans Daniel, Berlin
Shapes, Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin
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2010
It‘s All American, Curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Haley Mellon, New Jersey Moca, New Jersey
Public Private Paintings, MuZee Oostende, Ostende
ANTIANTIANTI – Shapes, Contexts and Rules, Curated by Nicolas Chardon, LOG, Bergamo
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2009
Besides, With, Against and Yet : Abstraction and The Ready-Made Gesture, The Kitchen, New York
Einarson, Rhodes, Whitney, Team Gallery, New York
The Practice of Joy Before Death; It just would not be a party without you, Scaramouche c/o Fruit & Flower Deli, New York
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2008
New Images / Unisex New Images / Unisex, Curated by Blake Rayne, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami
Artists of the Gallery, Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp
The Art of the Real, Curated by Bob Nickas, Vanmoerkerke Art Collection, Oostende
Inaugural Group Show, Cottage Home, Los Angeles
Defining a Moment: 25 New York Artists, Curated by Simon Watson, House of Campari, New York
Cube Passerby, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Passerby, New York
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2007
Jeremy Chance & Tamar Halpern & Davis Rhodes, Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp
Gimme A Little Sign, Sister, Los Angeles
First Look II, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York