Lot 33
33
Stephen G. Rhodes (b. 1977)
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Stephen G. Rhodes (b. 1977)

Ssspecific Object

Details
Stephen G. Rhodes (b. 1977)
Ssspecific Object
rubber
overall: 48 x 84 x 48in. (122 x 213.4 x 122cm.)
Executed in 2006
Provenance
Guild & Greyshkul, New York.
Acquired from the above in 2006.
Literature
Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, London 2009 (installation view illustrated in colour, pp. 644, 645 and 647).
E. Booth-Clibborn (ed.), The History of the Saatchi Gallery, London 2011 (installation view illustrated in colour, p. 772).
Exhibited
London, Saatchi Gallery, Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture, 2009-2010.
Special Notice
VAT rate of 20% is payable on hammer price and buyer's premium

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Lot Essay

Born in 1977 in Houston, Texas, Stephan G. Rhodes's Ssspecific Object from 2006 is a light-hearted and humorous play on the visual language of Minimalism. Referencing Donald Judd's critical essay from 1965 titled Specific Objects in which he introduced the idea of a new kind of art that is 'neither painting nor sculpture', Rhodes aesthetically re-visits the form of the cube, esteemed by the Minimalists of the sixties and seventies. Yet, rather than the cool, metallic surfaces of Judd's wall creations or Carl Andre's checkerboards, Ssspecific Object is a cube obscured, swallowed whole by a snake, complete with a coiled tail protruding from each side. Made from rubber and stretched to capacity, Rhodes's serpent poses as a discriminate consumer: a viper critic devouring the bulk feast of modernism.

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