For Jason Rhoades, the automotive was a car of inventive pursuit, each readymade sculpture and American idol. Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles dedicates a whole gallery at its Downtown Arts District location to a yearlong exploration of Rhoades’ artwork through the topic of automobiles and automotive tradition. Identified for the driving creativeness and ambition of his work, in addition to, at occasions, its reckless provocation and overwhelming materiality, Rhoades (1965–2006) was a world builder for whom the making of sculptures and the creation of narratives have been intertwined. His epic-scaled installations established him as a pressure of the worldwide artwork world within the Nineteen Nineties whereas he was primarily based in Los Angeles. “DRIVE,” will unfold over a sequence of thematic iterations, an ever-changing exhibition of Rhoades’ sculptures, drawings, movies and multiples—enriched by archival supplies, public packages and up to date views.

“DRIVE” opens with The Parking Area, that includes a Chevrolet Caprice and Impala, a Ferrari 328 GTS and a Ligier microcar, parked within the gallery alongside a projection wherein Rhoades fervidly discourses on his idea of the Automotive Initiatives whereas driving round Los Angeles. Recorded in a 1998 video interview with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rhoades explains the connection of automobiles to his artwork (parking is equated with sitting in a sculpture) and to every day apply (driving between the home, the studio and shops is time and area for the thoughts to race and wander). He expounds on automobiles as icons of artwork historical past (Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia speeded fashionable artwork ahead with their mechanized abstractions), identifiers of sophistication (you’re what you drive) and environments of management. The radio is tuned to Energy 106 FM and because the world streams by to the propulsive hip-hop beat, the romance of automobiles appears irresistible.

In April, the set up can be reconfigured to accommodate a lounge and turn out to be The Pit. An inflow of archival supplies can be key to unpacking the varied episodes of Rhoades’ Automotive Initiatives, beginning with the Caprice and the 1996 exhibition “Visitors.” Not solely did the artist minimize a cope with CAPC musée d’artwork contemporain de Bordeaux, France the organizers of the present, to go in on shopping for him the automotive as a transactional murals, he later leveraged its symbolic worth by buying and selling the Caprice for a Ferrari.

This summer season the exhibition’s focus will swerve onto The Racetrack. A set of half-scale NASCAR-style automobiles, customized jackets and colorfully painted tire limitations are amongst what stays of The Snowball. Staged in California as a daylong racing occasion at Willow Springs speedway, The Snowball was in the end destined for the 2000 Venice Biennale and Rhoades’ collaborative work for the Danish Pavilion. In September, The Storage will cowl the ultimate stretch of “DRIVE” with a choice of framed works on paper and a significant sculptural set up.

All year long, the line-up for “DRIVE” will function a spread of public packages. A movie sequence centered on automobiles and town of Los Angeles can be curated by movie historian and critic Elvis Mitchell. A theatrical staging of the playwright Charles Mee’s Beneath Development, which was impressed by Rhoades’ artwork in its collage depiction of America at the moment, can be introduced as a part of Hauser & Wirth’s Efficiency Mission.

Organized as an investigation in actual time, “DRIVE” invitations folks to strategy the exhibition like a storage of artwork and concepts, wherein automobiles are coming and going and tinkering is a productive frame of mind. As an artist, Rhoades was keenly attuned to sources of cultural energy and weak spot. When he put the interior combustion engine on artwork’s pedestal, was he presciently inserting the automotive the place it belongs for a greener tomorrow? The automotive as a topic in Rhoades’ artwork continues to drive and hassle the creativeness at the moment.

at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles
till January 14, 2025