A man with skin composed of overlapping shells arranges his hands on a wall in Lehmann Maupin Gallery’s front room as if to peer into the vibrantly colored picture before him – a mural depicting a block of flats. ‘Die Strandloper – Man’ or ‘The Beachwalker – Man,’ an installation by South African artist Robin Rhode, is titled after a term used to refer to one of South Africa’s oldest people groups, the Khoisan, who have lived along southwest Africa’s coasts and whose lifestyles have been under threat for centuries by European settlement and now climate change. Resembling the streamlined forms of hotels from the game Monopoly, the structures in their non-natural colors are a sharp contrast to the figures’ close physical relationship with the natural world. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 11th).
