Excerpt (Sealed) (Brown)
2010 - Photography (Photography)
30H x 40W inches
Stephen G. Rhodes
For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame. This visual seal refers to the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in which rescue workers spray painted the doors of the houses they searched giving the date, the team and the number of bodies found. Excerpt (Sealed) (Brown) is a multilayered collage with contradictory imagery—from New Orleans debris to the American eagle and a theater curtain. This complex network of interwoven signs suggests the unstable and fictional nature of defining of race and class, and in any staging of historical and social narrative.
Stephen G. Rhodes often works in a multiplicity of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and complex animated video installations. Rhodes is deeply interested in deconstructing—through elaborate yet often whimsical narratives that unravel in the exhibition space—American history and mythology.
