EL SOURDOG HEX e.V. displays the works of Jason Rhoades (* born in 1965 in Newcastle, California; died in 2006 in Los Angeles) from 9 July to 1 September 2007.

Jason Rhoades represented no known world because he searched for hidden, invisible structures. Standing right in the middle of everything and emanating outward. He used the world, juggled it, loved it, criticised it. Always with the greatest of attentiveness, with well-founded knowledge and respect. He interpreted the world by dissecting it, endowed it with metaphoric levels and combined them into new associative correlations. From the remnants of pop culture, Rhoades developed a poetry of the uncouth.

Jason Rhoades was no universalist in the true sense, but rather in a juxtaposed sense: He didn't endeavour to generalise the world and was fascinated by the already generalised image. He embraced it, reflected it, and bestowed upon it an abundance of details. He never made a big decision, but rather approached the world in many small steps, opined Eva Meyer-Hermann in 1998 in Nuremberg with regards to the exhibition The Purple Penis and the Venus (Nuremberg Art Centre, 1998) and the works of Jason Rhoades. He was a person providing enlightenment, the prototype of the do-it-yourselfer - a philosopher. Everything which he expressed artistically became a statement about the world. His works form an enormously large, shimmering image of the world. Reality and fiction become inseparable.

Through the greatness of his work, Jason Rhoades already pushed the limits of artistic endeavour. “He was a great utopian, one who did not wish to accept the end of the great works which was proclaimed by the post-modern sophists. He invented new building materials, e.g. the PreRoeFoam, a mixture of peas, salmon eggs and polysterene. In the Hamburg Deichtorhallen in 1999, he created a work which was called ‘The Perfect World’ and which was by far the most monstrous sculpture of new art history”, wrote Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2006 at the time of his untimely death.

Jason Rhoades said at the end of the nineties:
“If you know my work, you know that things are never finished.”
(Jason Rhoades in: Felix, Zdenek (publisher), loc. cit. p. 11)

Exhibition:
July 9 - September 1, 2007
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Admission is free