This monograph, published on the occasion of the Aspen Art Museum exhibition of Rodney McMillian, showcases a comprehensive survey of the artist's paintings, a section of his practice also encompassing sculpture, installation and performance. Incorporating and challenging the notion of art as social and historical critique, the works, essays and interview in this publication examine issues of race, identity and commerce in contemporary society. The book contains images of almost every painting produced by McMillian since, and including, his graduate thesis exhibition, demonstrating a fuller comprehension of the impetus of his work and an insight into the development of the artist's practice. It also features texts by Thomas Lax and Rodney McMillian as well as an interview between the artist and Heidi Zuckerman.
Born in 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina, and currently living in Los Angeles, Rodney McMillian received his BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and went on to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. McMillian's work has been exhibited at the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Herning Art Museum in Denmark, the Royal Academy in London and Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.