The artist as a character has been a recurrent topic Rodney Graham uses in his well known light boxes. For the first time, the Canadian artist will put together works and props centered on this issue. From the seminal fictitious performance Lobbing Potatoes at a Gong 1969, 2006 to the last light box produced for this occasion, Artist in Artist's Bar, 2016, the exhibition will present 6 large light boxes, a video projection, and a large series of props used in the works: paintings, sculptures, and photography.
The artist as a character is a way Rodney Graham deals with history of art, through self-portraits captured in precise settings playing with some clichés of modernism and post-modernism, or even folk art. The paintings and sculptures will be displayed separately from the light boxes, allowing them to be viewed as standalone artworks, when they were originally designed as props and accessories for the photographic compositions. The fiction comes true.