‘By going between places, [the car] will generate things. It’ll snowball, take on a mythology and a history, and then at some point it’ll just stop. And that’ll be it, it’ll be a finished sculpture.’—Jason Rhoades (1998) for Artforum
Hauser & Wirth thanks Hans Ulrich Obrist for the interview with Jason Rhoades, captured while driving around Los Angeles in 1998.
For Jason Rhoades, the car was a vehicle of artistic pursuit, both readymade sculpture and American idol. Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles dedicates an entire gallery at its Downtown Arts District location to a yearlong exploration of Rhoades’ art via the subject of cars and car culture. ‘DRIVE,’ will unfold over a series of thematic iterations, an ever-changing exhibition of Rhoades’ sculptures, drawings, videos and multiples—enriched by archival materials, public programs and contemporary perspectives.
13 September 2024 – 5 January 2025
The Garage
The Garage covers the final stretch of ‘DRIVE’ with a selection of framed works on paper and a major sculptural installation. The installation features a single sculpture: Garage Renovation New York (CHERRY Makita)’ and is the first presentation in Los Angeles of this major early work by Jason Rhoades.
This sculpture was installed in real time. Starting 17 September, the public was able to observe the care and complexity that goes into the installation of a work by Jason Rhoades.
All that appears to be missing from this sculpture of a garage-which Jason Rhoades made from materials and stuffed with objects one would expect to find in a garage-is the car. But there amidst the buckets, sheetrock, tarps, tools, screws, bits of lumber, a bicycle (made out of aluminum foil), pizzas (molded from plaster) and oil is the American beauty: a Ford V-8 engine. Suspended from a hydraulic engine lift, its transmission has been transitioned to drive an absurdly gargantuan cordless drill. 'All the power you need': to quote the Makita tool brand's famous motto.
From an installation of related drawings emerge narrative threads and associations that further glue the sculpture together. There is a sketch of a cherry on top of an ice cream sundae along with the slang term 'cherry' for cars and sex. There are references to the artist as mechanic, the garage as studio, the sculpture as a tomb full of hidden treasures. And there are the lines that Rhoades wrote for his art dealer to recite when the sculpture was shown for the first time in New York.
Organized as an investigation in real time, ‘DRIVE’ invites people to approach the exhibition like a garage of art and ideas, in which cars are coming and going and tinkering is a productive state of mind. As an artist, Rhoades was keenly attuned to sources of cultural power and weakness. When he put the internal combustion engine on art’s pedestal, was he presciently placing the car where it belongs for a greener tomorrow? The car as a subject in Rhoades’ art continues to drive and trouble the imagination today.
Known for his art’s driving imagination and ambition, as well as its reckless provocation and overwhelming materiality, Rhoades was a world builder for whom the making of sculptures and the creation of narratives were intertwined. His epic-scaled installations established him as a force of the international art world in the 1990s while based in Los Angeles, where driving is as much a part of daily life as being stuck in traffic. Rhoades grew up engine adept, fixing and driving motorbikes, cars, trucks and other vehicles in rural Northern California. Rhoades studied with Richard Jackson and Paul McCarthy at UCLA, where he earned his MFA in 1993. It was with characteristic pragmatism and brash ludicrousness that he conducted his final lap of art school performing heats in a tiny red Formula One kit car on a miniature racetrack that he constructed out of cardboard.
Jason Rhoades: Illastrations
‘Illastrations’ is a facsimile of an undated sketchbook of drawings by Jason Rhoades that he and his wife, artist Rachel Khedoori, gifted to their friend and patron Iwan Wirth. A leading figure of the 1990s international art world, Rhoades was a world builder, an outsider. Like his art, the book is a dynamic construction designed to systematically explore and communicate life’s big questions. It serves as a guide to Rhoades’s visionary work: a collection of didactic cartoons, organized by keyword, that illustrate key concepts, materials, works of art, and personal references, including ‘abstraction,’ ‘curator,’ ‘donut,’ ‘Marcel Duchamp,’ ‘unfair.’ Presented in a slipcase and bound in what feels like an art supply sketchbook, ‘Illastrations’ is an object to treasure, encapsulating the playfulness of a Californian cowboy who never relinquished his sense of punk practicality.
IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR
27 February – 28 April 2024
The Parking Space
‘DRIVE’ opened with The Parking Space, featuring a Chevrolet Caprice and Impala, a Ferrari 328 GTS and a Ligier microcar, parked in the gallery alongside a projection in which Rhoades fervidly discoursed on his concept of the Car Projects while driving around Los Angeles. Recorded in a 1998 video interview with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rhoades explained the relationship of cars to his art (parking is equated with siting a sculpture) and to daily practice (driving between the house, the studio and stores is time and space for the mind to race and wander). He expounded on cars as icons of art history (Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia speeded modern art forward with their mechanized abstractions), identifiers of class (you are what you drive) and environments of control. The radio was tuned to Power 106 FM and as the world streamed by to the propulsive hip-hop beat, the romance of cars seemed irresistible.
4 May – 16 June 2024
The Pit
The second iteration of DRIVE was fully equipped to investigate the stories and pursuits behind the Car Projects, featuring four readymade car sculptures along with an influx of archival materials and related works by Rhoades and other artists.
2 July – 18 August 2024
The Racetrack
The third iteration of 'DRIVE’ centered on competition and featured three works that took the form of circuit races on racetracks. Whether going up against others or oneself, to what degree does competition fuel creativity? For Rhoades, this question served as both a serious and absurd artistic proposition.
This iteration of ‘DRIVE’ was realized in collaboration with 1301PE.
Taking the Museum Out for a Spin
In the summer of 1998, Jason Rhoades parked a burgundy Chevrolet Impala SS on the plaza of the Kunsthaus Zurich, where it represented his participation in a group show and performed in a number of ways: It was an outdoor sculpture, a museum for the collection of 'minor works by major artists', and it was, at the end of the day, also a car.
On view in Downtown Los Angeles
‘Jason Rhoades. DRIVE’ is on view now through 14 January 2025 at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles. Please visit our location page to plan your visit.
On view now at West 22nd Street, New York
‘Drive II’
Hauser & Wirth New York presents a major exhibition of Jason Rhoades' ‘Car Projects,’ including a fleet of different makes of readymade car sculptures. The installation also features a monumental work from 2000 named in tribute to the dada modernist and car collector Francis Picabia.
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About the Artist
Jason Rhoades
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