ART CITIES:Los Angeles-Jason Rhoades

A decade after his death and in a moment of heightened political tension, Jason Rhoades’ radical oeuvre is more relevant than ever. From religion, commerce, sex, and racial and gender stereotypes, to role of the artist himself, no subject was off-limits and taboo was embraced. Rhoades viewed art as a machine set on a continuous feedback loop, delivering something superficially chaotic but replete with hidden references beyond first blush.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Hauser Wirth & Schimmel Archive

The exhibition “Jason Rhoades: Installations, 1994–2006” at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is the first major Los Angeles exhibition devoted to the politically charged, darkly exuberant art of Jason Rhoades. The exhibition traces the evolution of Jason Rhoades’ vision and methods through 6 installations that define his work: “Swedish Erotica and Fiero Parts” (1994), “My Brother/Brancuzi” (1995), “The Creation Myth” (1998), “My Madinah. In pursuit of my ermitage…” (2004), “The Black Pussy… and the Pagan Idol Workshop” (2005), and “Tijuanatanjierchandelier” (2006). Jason Rhoades completed his art studies at UCLA in 1993, where professors Chris Burden, Nancy Rubins, Charles Ray, Paul McCarthy, and Richard Jackson influenced his highly personal experimentation with performance and sculpture. Rhoades’ culminating accretions of readymades, neon signs, and libidinous imagery mimic the seductive vacuum of capitalist culture. Rhoades’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, “Swedish Erotica and Fiero Parts” was presented at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in West Hollywood in 1994. His only work to specifically reference the urban and cultural landscape of LA, the installation, a yellow world of assembled mundane items, sent seismic shocks across the local art scene. Rhoades’ deep fascination with Ikea and the act of buying spurred him to create modular set-ups of ‘furniture’ for viewers to navigate. Rhoades continued to explore installation with “My Brother/Brancuzi” created for the 1995 Whitney Biennial. The museum’s setting and history inspired Rhoades to explore the values of Modernism. Juxtaposing his brother’s suburban bedroom with the famous studio of Constantin Brancusi, Rhoades transposed traditional perspectives. Photographs of his brother’s bedroom and Brancusi’s studio line the perimeter of this installation, while quotidian mechanical objects fill its interior. “The Creation Myth” is an analytical unmasking of the myth of Man as Creator. The artist sought to understand why, how, and what humans create by exploring Creationist and Evolutionist theories in tandem. The irreverent representation of the human body and brain is structured into levels to suggest our categories of perception: the archetypal, the real, the unconscious and the rebellious. Each of the six nouns in the work’s subtitle (The Mind, The Body and the Spirit, the Shit, Prick and the Rebellious Part’) is metaphorically portrayed, while the function of the brain itself unfolds through a calculated combination of readymades and images. On a drive between LA and Mecca, California, Rhoades conceived a work that would be his own hermitage, “My Madinah. In pursuit of my ermitage…”, part mosque, part temple, a place of religious seclusion covered in a carpet of towels adjoined by the artist’s Spukaki technique, punctuated by crystals, incense, ceramic donkeys, and camel saddle footstools. Beneath a veritable cloud of 240 words in neon such slang terms for female genitalia float above the scene. Viewers are invited to lie down and surrender to transmitting light. “The Black Pussy… and the Pagan Idol Workshop” was originally conceived as a two-part project: the first part, a public bazaar-like, sculptural installation presented in 2005 at Hauser & Wirth London and the second part, a private, with invitation-only performance that was activated by a series of happenings called “Black Pussy Soiree Macramé Cabarets” which took place in Los Angeles in 2006. The project was inspired by the intersection of commerce and religion, specifically the ancient pre-Islamic story of the Kaaba.  The final work of the exhibition “Tijuanatanjierchandelier” raises questions about consumerism in relation to disparate cultures and classes by exploring tourism in analogous third world border towns: Tijuana, Mexico and Tangier, Morocco. In this installation, culturally significant objects are purged of their traditional function due to the homogeneity of modernization, thus masking differences and easing fears of the first world trespasser.

Info: Organizer: Paul Schimmel, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, Duration: 18/2-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, www.hauserwirth.com