Rodney Graham

"The figure of the artist remains a central subject of investigation for Rodney Graham (*1949), known for straddling many areas simultaneously--painter, photographer, writer, philosopher, actor, psychologist, scientist, and musician. This new monograph gathers together works made between 1994 and 2017, in particular his photographic lightboxes and his musical production. Contradicting the title "That's Not Me," the lightbox series focuses on the use of the self-portrait. Graham shows himself starring in various fictional roles (artist, musician, actor, lighthouse keeper, paddler, reader) at different times. According to curator Alessandro Vincentelli, Graham likes to look back at history and repeat it through his work, by "stirring up art history with multiple and varied cultural references, so that the signals are subtly altered for the viewer." Briony Fer suggests that, "as much as Graham makes pictures that cohere as mise-en-scènes, and that operate self-reflexively to speculate on the very mechanics of the image, so it is impossible to keep all the allusions in check. There is something enigmatic that we can never entirely satisfactorily trace back to the numerous sources that