Rodney McMillian
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Rodney McMillian (born 1969, Columbia, South Carolina) is an artist based in Los Angeles.
McMillian holds a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia [1] (1991). He studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [2] (BFA, 1998), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture [3], and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts [4] in 2002.
McMillian’s work has been exhibited at the UCLA Hammer Museum [5] and the Museum of Contemporary Art [6] in Los Angeles, the Studio Museum in Harlem [7] New York, the Herning Art Museum in Copenhagen, and The Royal Academy [8] in London. His work features in several important collections, including the Harald Falckenberg Collection [9] and the Saatchi Gallery [10].
Central to Rodney McMillian’s practice is the concept that history is not fixed: it is constantly authored, edited, and reformed as an ergonomic template for the present. McMillian questions the strategies of power that shape predominant understanding of contemporary society. Through his sculptures, paintings, installations, and videos, McMillian challenges our engagement with our environment. Incorporating references to art, politics, and popular culture, McMillian’s work subverts the inherent ‘messaging’ within everyday experience.
Often citing art-historical styles and the tactics of museology, McMillan confronts the supremacy of high culture. In collaged paintings, he uses degenerate household materials to transfer the utopian autonomy of modernism into the realm of the plebeian. Viewing history as a ‘readymade’ for the artist’s use, McMillian’s materials are sourced to correspond or conflict with pre-fab ideals. Through the tactility of his works, McMillian creates a physical intimacy at odds with peremptory symbolism, narrowing the gap between proscribed social identity and individual experience.
