Carol Rhodes

In February 2024, Haus am Waldsee presents two parallel exhibitions by the American artist Jenna Bliss (*1984 New York) and the Scottish painter Carol Rhodes (*1959 Edinburgh; † 2018 Glasgow). The use of temporally or spatially distanced perspectives to reveal new angles on established narratives are characteristic of both artists’ work. By combining everyday observations, speculations, and meticulous research, the two exhibitions form a space in which fact and fiction meet and the larger bearing of structural human intervention becomes tangible.

Carol Rhodes devoted her work primarily to a type of landscape that generally receives little attention: post-industrial areas criss-crossed by landfills, airports, highways or reservoirs that evoke the unstoppable flow of material and labor. Human activity is everywhere in her images, yet people themselves do not feature. This oscillation between a diffuse presence and absence, between the supposedly recognizable and the abstract, is characteristic of the artist’s work. Though based on experiences and impressions in the real world, her paintings can be described as fictitious syntheses composed of different sources. In addition to maps, environmental studies or photographs from books on urban planning, geography or geology, she also included her own images, which she sometimes took from helicopters or airplanes. Rhodes transcended these different sources in the course of a complex painting process involving numerous sketches, drawings and revisions. Her scenes appear both familiar and strange, every day and yet mysterious.

The exhibition at Haus am Waldsee brings together a selection of works from 1993-2015 and includes alongside paintings some of the artist’s drawings that were rarely exhibited during her lifetime.

Exhibition booklet