An Expression of Joy

BMW is work­ing with South African artist Robin Rhode to pro­mote the BMW brand, the Z4 Road­ster, and osten­si­bly Rhode’s own work with another instal­la­tion of their long-​​running part­ner­ship with the arts via it’s BMW Art Cars program.

Rhode has pre­vi­ously come to light when Nike SB took heavy ‘inspi­ra­tion’ from his pieces as the basis of a series of adver­tis­ments fea­tur­ing Paul Rodriguez.

His work with BMW on the sur­face appears to be a long stretch from his foun­da­tion as a per­for­mance artist, in many cases being site-​​specific. In ‘Leak’ (2000), Rhode refenced Duchamp’s ready­made ‘Foun­tain’ (1917) by uri­nat­ing on a hand-​​drawn uri­nal inscribed on the wall of Cape Town’s South African National Gallery. Fur­ther:

Rhode’s visual and con­cep­tual alpha­bet is built around issues of desire, loss, and dis­lo­ca­tion in a cap­i­tal­ist world while also acknowl­edg­ing the spe­cific indig­ni­ties of grow­ing up “col­ored” in for­merly apartheid South Africa. For instance, Park Bench (2000) was a life-​​size draw­ing of said object on the wall of the Par­lia­ment build­ing in Cape Town, in an area that used to be off-​​limits to all but white South Africans. Dressed in dark, hooded cloth­ing asso­ci­ated with trouble-​​making youths, Rhode then pro­ceeded to loi­ter around his bench and was even­tu­ally arrested for defam­ing state prop­erty. [–Walker Art]

It would seem to me BMW wants des­per­ately to iden­tify with Rhode’s rebel­lious streak. I see that more to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the BMW of old, rather than the newer, softer BMW, but being a BMW vin­tage fan (and owner), I sus­pect I’m a bit biased.