JASON RHOADES | Down Under

The Estate of the Artist Acquired from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the orange tonalities of the neon words veer more towards red in the original. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition and full working order.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

California born and bred, Jason Rhoades is the quintessential LA artist. Sadistic provocateur, arbiter of trash meets high gloss, Rhoades was the artist that Jerry Saltz had in mind when, in 2005, he described the “clusterfuck aesthetic" of a band of artists borne of the unique cultural conditions particular to America and specifically Los Angeles (Jerry Saltz, ‘Clusterfuck Aesthetics’, The Village Voice, 29 November 2005, online). Spiritually attuned to the cacophonous chaos of Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Rhoades engendered a sprawling psychical realm entrenched within a deeply American sensibility. Blending suburban kitsch and low-culture Pop with a rigorous formalistic ambition, Rhoades’ work is exhilarating, overwhelming and habitually offensive.  Created in 2003, Down Under belongs to Rhoades’ pussy lexicon – works that brandish neon euphemisms for female genitalia that today comprise the hallmark of Rhoades brief but powerfully influential career. Known for his large scale messy installations shown at a roll call of the most prestigious museums across the globe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art; Kunsthalle Basel; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Tate Liverpool; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna; and the CAC in Malaga, Rhoades’ work embodies a semi-psychotic confluence of shock tactics, carnivalesque immersivity, formal rigour, disorientating maximalism, and political-incorrectness that make museums, to quote Saltz, “feel like department stores, junkyards, and disaster films” (Ibid.). Typical of Rhoades’ later body of works in which trailing, tangled wires are interspersed with neon signs and junkshop paraphernalia, the present work delivers a rhizomatic sensorial onslaught and constitutes a perfect microcosm of Rhoades’ macro universe.

Comprising a chrome shelving unit stacked with wires, voltage transformer boxes and ceramic donkey figurines interlaced with neon words mounted onto sheets of coloured plexi, Down Under directly relates to the acclaimed Black Pussy project: a sequence of sprawling installations and performance oriented pieces that form an assault on aesthetic sensibilities and moral conventions. 2003, the year of this work’s execution, was the year in which the very first wave of inflammatory ‘pussy words’ appeared in his work, most notably within the provocative Meccatuna installation at David Zwirner – an all-encompassing environment that opened two years to the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the centre of this installation a 1:3 scale replica model of the Kaaba – the sacred black cube at the Grand mosque in Mecca and holiest site for the Islamic faith – made from lego and chrome scaffolding was connected to a host of cables that linked up with trollies, scattered racecar tires, and carts, around which a perimeter frieze of Arabic and English ‘pussy words’ were mounted. Utterly typical of the best of Rhoades’ output, this installation and by implication present work, posit contemporary art as a sculptural situation; to quote art historian Ingrid Schaffner, “one that incorporates traces of process, and potentially performance, amidst a surplus – and surfeit – of objects, information, images, stuff” (Ingrid Schaffner, ‘Revving Up’ in: Exh. Cat., Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania (and travelling), Jason Rhoades Four Roads, 2013-15, p. 13). Taking on the pervasive and incessant onslaught of stimuli that constitutes contemporary existence, Rhoades’ late oeuvre approaches the Deluezian rhizome in its non-hierarchical amalgamation of visual and linguistic inferences.

With a mature career spanning only twelve years, between 1994 and 2006, it is only now, twelve years later, that the true significance of Rhoades’ prophetic and farsighted project is becoming clear. As illuminated by novelist and critic Chris Kraus: “American artist, American psycho. Born at the end of the mid-twentieth century, in 1965, when the proliferation of image and consumer culture had already subsumed and come to define American consciousness, Rhoades had no intention of offering something so futile as a ‘critique of consumerism’. Rather, his genius was to plunge into the heart of the image-flow and feedback the experience of pure information, demonstrating in the process how thought triggers thought, leaving only material traces. Clearly Rhoades was two decades ahead of his time” (Chris Kraus, ‘Jason Rhoades, American Artist’ in: Exh. Cat., Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania (and travelling), op. cit., pp. 93-94).