Jason Rhoades
Item #20, Passion Fruit
Item #20, Passion Fruit
$350,000
Jason Rhoades
Item #20, Passion Fruit
2005
Fake Metro brand Super Erecta Shelf® wire shelving unit, black light neon phrase, 120 V Transformer, GTO cable, Egyptian Hookah pipe (brass), Chinese rag rugs, bever-felt cowboy hat, pipe cleaners, glass fruit, camel saddle style footstool cushion, dream catchers, orange extension cord, pipe cleaners, leather palette shaped blotter, Chinese scholar stone, spotlight, Egyptian cotton, scaffolding counter weight, monofilament, monofilament crimps, Books: The Spirit of Gongshi, Scholars’ Rocks in Ancient China, Basquiat
226 x 314 x 138 cm / 89 x 123 ⅝ x 54 ⅜ in
Renowned for his monumental installations, Jason Rhoades’ eclectic practice poignantly engages with themes of cultural identity, social relations, and systems of belief. ‘Item #20, Passion Fruit’ (2005) is from Rhoades’ elaborate ‘Pussy Trilogy,’ a series that encapsulates the artist’s fascination with objects and ideas commonly fetishized by contemporary culture. Through a chaotic yet hyper-calculated group of trinkets, Rhoades encourages his audience to decipher the paradoxical absurdity of the notions and iconography that shape our consumerist environment and its shiny ethos.
The work is comprised of a wire shelving unit fashioned into a couch-like structure draped in layers of colorful striped rugs. Assorted objects—from dream catchers and cowboy hats to cushions and pipe cleaners—hang from and rest on the reconstituted shelf. A neon sign and Rhoades’ signature orange extension cord, both of which are core elements of the series, are also featured. Rhoades referred to ‘Item #20, Passion Fruit’ as an ‘idol,’ an individual sculpture within the larger whole. The artist’s rhetoric was drawn from his interest in religious practices and idols destroyed in the 7th Century to affirm that the creator could not be rendered in material form.
‘One might view Rhoades as a once-in-a-generation thinker, someone who saw fluidity where many see only fixity, someone who was propelled by the need to invent entire systems and parables to explain huge subjects: the creation myth, capitalism, America, the history of art.’—Anne Reeve [1]
Rhoades’ installations are imbued with complex narratives—he encourages viewers to connect and interpret the myriad associations and relationships between the components that comprise his works. Accordingly, his practice is defined by a bold sense of freedom, subverting the expectation of artists and artworks by breaking with aesthetic conventions and pushing against the boundaries of the art world and his audience. Through continuous engagement with the artist’s work, the viewer can discern the prescient truths disguised by the cultural artifices, contradictions and myths that fascinated Rhoades.
‘I am interested in each and all of the connections that happen in life. I want to see everything as a continuum…I am fighting to make interconnections possible, and because things inspire me to create a work.’—Jason Rhoades [2]
Jason Rhoades (1965 – 2006) is known for monumental, room-filling installations. These idiosyncratic sculptures incorporate a wide range of objects including products of mass culture combined with hand-made items and biographical references. Drawing on the history of assemblage, Rhoades imbues his materials with powerful formal, narrative and allegorical links, encouraging viewers to connect and interpret the associative chains. Rhoades often drew inspiration from the city of Los Angeles where he lived and worked as well as The Great American West, informed by his rural upbringing in Northern California. His work has been exhibited internationally since the early 1990s.