International Artist-In-Residence
New Works 00.4

Jason Rhoades

Inglewood, CA

December 07, 2000–January 14, 2001

about the artist

Jason Rhoades was born in 1965 in Newcastle, CA, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an M.F.A. from the University of Cailfornia, Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the U.S., including solo shows at the Kunsthalle Basel (1996); Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands (1998); Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Germany (1998); Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (1999); and Castello di Rivoli, Italy (1999). In 1999 he collaborated with Peter Bonde for the Danish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale; and was included in the 1997 Venice Biennale, the 1995 and 1997 Whitney Biennials, and the 1997 Lyon Biennial. His work was also included in the exhibition Sunshine & Noir: Art in Los Angeles 1960-1997, organized by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. His work will be included in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ exhibition Public Offering in early 2001.

Jason Rhoades' haphazard and chaotic installations mark the gray area between art and evidence. Found materials including building supplies, automobiles and debris are arranged into a precarious landscape of consumer culture.

Jason Rhoades was selected for his ArtPace residency by the March 1998 panel consisting of Dan Cameron, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Amada Cruz, Kellie Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Nancy Rubins.

about the project

At ArtPace, Jason Rhoades presents IMPALA: The International Museum Project About Leaving and Arriving. As the title implies, the central element of this project is a car, a recurring theme and source material in Rhoades’ work. For IMPALA, Rhoades drove his Chevrolet Impala from Los Angeles to San Antonio, with a second Chevrolet, a Caprice, in tow on a trailer. The Caprice’s engine was then rebuilt in Texas and returned to California. The process of driving and repairing was meticulously documented and exhibited in digital form. The digital display panel, a “hard-drive flatwork,” as described by the artist, is presented alongside the functional trailer and a second sculptural expression of a trailer, made from the aluminum tubes that have become a familiar material from recent exhibits.

Each of Rhoades’ installations merges with the next, and his residency at ArtPace is linked to his project Perfect World at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and subsequent exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. In both shows, and at ArtPace, labor and process are celebrated. States of transition—a structure under construction, a road trip underway, a vehicle waiting to be revived—mark the transitional nature of Rhoades’ work.

Jason Rhoades extends the boundaries of art and artmaking, developing his own language and aesthetic that has roots in performance and popular culture. There is little distinction between the process and the product, between experience and storytelling. Rhoades builds his own world, where autobiography and material are inter-dependent. In Rhoades’ world, identity is constructed through consumer products and media images, and society is thus defined by the building, preservation, arrangement and destruction of these products. The result is a theatrical mise en scène, one that becomes a logo or brand of the artist himself.

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