IMPALA: The International Museum Project About Leaving and Arriving

Jason Rhoades

Exhibition: Dec 7, 2000 – Jan 14, 2001


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 interdependent. 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.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 interdependent. 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.

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 interdependent. 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.

Artist

Jason Rhoades

Los Angeles, California, USA

Jason Rhoades was born in 1965 in Newcastle, CA and died in 2006.  He held 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.

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Curators

Amada Cruz

Los Angeles, CA
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Kellie Jones

New York, NY
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Nancy Rubins

Topanga, California, USA

Born in 1952 in Naples, Texas, Californian Nancy Rubins received her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at Paul Kasmin Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Venice Biennale Aperto. Rubins’ work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ Helter Skelter exhibit in 1992. Rubins teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Art Department. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Annette DiMeo Carlozzi

Austin, TX

Independent curator Annette DiMeo Carlozzi has built an expansive practice across the US as a curator of modern and contemporary art, focusing on ideas and experiences, artists and audiences. Raised in Boston and trained at the Walker Art Center, she has served in a variety of foundational roles: as the first curator at Laguna Gloria Art Museum (now The Contemporary Austin); executive director of the Aspen Art Museum and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Visual Arts Producer for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta; and in multiple positions—ranging from founding modern and contemporary curator to Deputy Director for Art and Programs to Curator at Large—at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Committed to expanding the canon, she has created notable exhibitions (Luis Jiménez, Paul Chan, Michael Smith, Deborah Hay, Negotiating Small TruthsAmerica/AmericasDesire), produced important commissions (Nancy Holt, Siah Armajani, Betye Saar, Vito Acconci, Byron Kim, Teresita Fernández), and acquired major works by a wide range of international artists. Carlozzi has had a long relationship with Artpace, having served as an early advisor, artist interviewer, and program panelist, member of the 1998 artist selection panel and 2001–03 Board of Visitors. In 2015 she curated Immersed from Linda Pace’s art collection, now called Ruby City.

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Dan Cameron

Newport Beach, California

From 2012 to 2015 he was Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. In 2006, Dan Cameron founded the Biennial Prospect New Orleans, where he worked at until 2011. From 1995 to 2005 he was Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where he developed numerous group exhibitions, such as East Village USA and Living inside the Grid, and several individual shows dedicated to the artists Martin Wong, William Kentridge, Carolee Schneemann, Carroll Dunham, Doris Salcedo, José Antonio Hernández Diez, among others.
As independent curator he has organized many exhibitions that brought him international attention, such as El arte y su doble (Fundación Caixa, Madrid, 1987); El jardín salvaje (Fundación Caixa, Barcelona, 1991); Cocido y crudo (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1995), among many others. In 2003, he was the Artistic Director of the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and in 2006, Co-curator of the 5th Taipei Biennial.
He has published hundreds of texts in books, catalogues and magazines, and has given numerous talks and conferences at museums and universities around the world, also carrying out an important teaching activity in New York.

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Hans Ulrich Obrist

London, England

Hans Ulrich-Obrist is the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, positions created for Ulrich-Obrist in April 2006. As a curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France since 2000, among many other exhibitions he organized solo shows with Jonas Mekas (2003), Anri Sala (2004), and Cerith Wyn Evans (2006). Before this position Ulrich-Obrist was an independent curator for a decade, organizing the group show Take Me I’m Yours at the Serpentine (1995) and Retrace Your Steps: Remember at the John Soane Museum (1999), also in London, England. Ulrich-Obrist was a panelist in 1998 for the 1999-2000 year of artists, and was invited to be a speaker at the 2003 symposium, but was unable to come due to illness.
Photo by Dominik Gigler

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