Rodney Graham

303 Gallery, New York
Through October 27

Known for his performances and conceptual films, Rodney Graham's latest project, The Phonokinetoscope (2001), shows the artist cycling through Berlin’s Tiergarten in a reenactment of the first acid trip taken by the inventor of LSD, Dr. Albert Hofmann.

And what a trip it is: Graham’s journey begins with a cup of tea poured from a thermos inscribed with the enigmatic words “Sunflower Shanghai.” Noticing a wooden clothespin and a playing card—the Queen of Diamonds—lying in the bushes, he fastens them to his bicycle wheel so that, as the spokes rotate, the card flicks repeatedly.

All the while, a gloomy sort of rock music blares on the soundtrack with lyrics like “When I fell off my medication it seemed I lost the art of conversation.” Graham is then seen ingesting a tab of acid, mounting his bike, and riding through the woods past a duck pond and beautifully manicured flowerbeds. At a certain point we see Graham crossing a bucolic bridge by riding the bicycle backwards—a particular party trick of his—this curious episode adding a fitting coda to the cyclical film before it recommences.

Upon exiting the screening, the visitor may notice a vinyl LP album, playing on a turntable nearby, the label of which also reads “Sunflower Shanghai.” It's just one cryptic clue among many for solving a problem that has not been clearly identified. As in Coruscating Cinnamon Granules (1996)—also on view here—showing cinnamon embers glowing and sparking on an electric heating coil, Graham again skillfully layers his many references and metaphors. The swirl of the heating coil and the flashes made by the burning spice remind one of cinematic representations of tripping on acid.

Indeed, Graham’s works often allude to one another—not in a linear way, but in a complexly interwoven manner. In these works, we are not given entrance privileges into the mind of the user/artist, but merely permission to witness essentially meaningless acts. Graham is something of a naughty schoolboy prankster whose intelligence allows him to create multi-layered readings of various cultural signifiers drawn form the world of film, music, and Pop culture.




Audrey Walen