Tag Archives: Jason Rhoades

URSULA HAUSER

Origin stories are essential to Ursula Hauser. Growing up in St. Gallen, Switzerland, she co-founded and directed her family’s appliance business in the city. Although she initially felt a stronger connection to modern architecture than contemporary art, she started buying works by Swiss artists in the 1960s.

“They came and went in our house. And it’s still that way with our artists. We would meet on weekends or were invited to birthdays. To me, support means acquiring something an artist has made. In the mid-1980s, I set up my own showrooms in the abandoned Rohner Textile factory in Flawil: Galerie Arte Nuova. Actually it wasn’t a gallery; I just wanted to give local artists a platform.” — Ursula Hauser*

Hauser—who co-founded Hauser & Wirth in 1992 in Zürich with her future son-in-law Iwan Wirth and daughter Manuela—has remained personal friends with many of the artists whose work she collects, always availing herself of the opportunity to spend time with them in their studios, talking through their process. The new publication THE INNER MIRROR: CONVERSATIONS WITH URSULA HAUSER, ART COLLECTOR—a beautifully illustrated book-length interview between Hauser, Laura Bechter, and Michaela Unterdörfer—is the story of this exchange.

“In the big American studios… you make contact, introduce yourself, or maybe you’ve bought a work, so there’s already a connection. And then you take a very tentative approach, proceed step-by-step, depending on whether the chemistry is there. As a rule, you’ve already met at an exhibition, in a gallery, or in a museum. And finally you peer into all the corners.”*

Whether discovering SoHo in the 1990s with Iwan Wirth, celebrating Parkett’s tenth anniversary with Bice Curiger and Jacqueline Burckhardt, trading cars with Jason Rhoades in Los Angeles, or discovering drawings by Ida Applebroog in the artist’s cabinet drawers, THE INNER MIRROR is a private view into the life and work of this key art world figure. For Hauser, the book’s title refers to something women were seldom afforded the luxury of revealing, something Hauser found through art.

“Women who support a family and have to survive—it doesn’t occur to anyone that they might have personal feelings. You simply have to fight, it’s a struggle, and you have no choice but to make something good, something better out of it… Louise Bourgeois’ work is like a mirror of humanity. For people of my generation, it was impossible to let on that you were vulnerable. You would never reveal the reflections on your inner mirror. That was a sign of weakness and then you would have been lost. And that’s exactly what Louise’s work shows. Her art creates a space where that can be expressed.”*

The works in the Ursula Hauser Collection stay with her—she’s held on to drawings and models by Paul McCarthy for years—and Hauser collaborates with the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen on exhibitions of the collection. This summer in southwest England, the show UNCONSCIOUS LANDSCAPE—WORKS FROM THE URSULA HAUSER COLLECTION—curated by Manuela Wirth and Laura Bechter—brings together sixty-five works by the women who have drawn Hauser’s eye over the last four decades.

*THE INNER MIRROR—CONVERSATIONS WITH URSULA HAUSER, ART COLLECTOR, edited by Laura Bechter and Michaela Unterdörfer (Zürich: Hauser & Wirth, 2019).

UNCONSCIOUS LANDSCAPE—WORKS FROM THE URSULA HAUSER COLLECTION

Through September 8.

Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset.

From top: Loredana Sperini, Untitled, 2012, wax, cement, and pigment, photograph by Sebastian Stadler; Maria Lassnig, Die rasende Grossmutter (The Racing Grandmother), 1963, © Maria Lassnig Foundation; Berlinde De Bruyckere, Piëta, 2008, wax, epoxy, metal, and wood; Carol Rama, Ostentazione, 2002, mixed media and oil on paper on canvas, courtesy Achivio Carol Rama, Turin, photograph by Thomas Bruns Fotograf; Alina Szapocznikow, Stela (Stéle), 1968, polyester resin and polyurethane foam, photograph by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich, © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2019; Roni Horn, Untitled, No. 2, 1999, two Iris-printed photographs on Somerset paper; Phyllida Barlow, untitled: awnings 4 (yellow), 2013, acrylic on watercolor paper; Eva Hesse, H + H, 1965, varnish, ink, gouache, enamel, cord, metal found object (wood), paper-caché, unknown modeling compound, particle board, wood, © Estate of Eva Hesse; Meret Oppenheim, Pelzhandschuhe (Fur Gloves with Wooden Fingers), 1936, fur gloves, wooden fingers, and nail polish; Louise Bourgeois, The Good Mother (Topiary) , 1999, steel, ceramic beads, wood, wire, and cloth; Sylvia Sleigh, Working at Home, 1969, oil on canvas, photograph by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich; Sheila Hicks, Pigment Sticks, 2015, bamboo sticks with pigmented synthetic fibers for bas-relief, photograph by Andrea Rossetti; Heidi Bucher, Die Quelle (The Source), 1987, vase, metal, textile, glue, and color, installation view at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London, 2018, © Estate of Heidi Bucher. Images courtesy and © the artists and the Ursula Hauser Collection Archive.

PARKETT — PHOTO

Parkett presents PHOTO, “the first survey exhibition of all photographic works made by artists for the journal over the last three decades. On view at Parkett’s Zurich space, the show includes some ninety works spanning a rarely seen, vast, and diverse range of photographic positions and ideas.”*

“The exhibition follows the evolution of photographic methods in the past three decades, with many of the earlier photographs making use of analog techniques, while digital editing informs the more recent works. Common threads including people and portraiture, landscapes both urban and natural, everyday objects, and abstraction, connect an otherwise expansive range of visual topics.”*

“Many of the works on view combine photographic elements with other media, such as gouache, collage, textiles, installation, or printmaking. Also on view are works, which while similar in terms of media and format, are unique and contain distinct differences within each project. Further exhibition displays include five video works, as well as a selection of artists’ inserts—the specially commissioned 10–12 book page projects published in each issue of Parkett.”*

“You can grab an issue from thirty years ago and see the context. You can grab that context and time. The internet has no historical orientation. You click on an article and you don’t know what context [it was published in]. I think this loss of memory is deplorable.” — Jacqueline Burckhardt, Parkett co-founding editor**

PHOTO

THE FIRST SURVEY OF ALL PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS MADE BY ARTISTS FOR PARKETT SINCE 1984*

Through September 28.

Parkett Space Zürich

Limmatstrasse 268, Zürich.

**See “Time, Context, Object—The Parkett Story,” PARIS LA 16 (2018).

PHOTO artists include: Tomma Abts, Franz Ackermann, Doug Aitken, Allora/Calzadilla, Francis Alys, Ed Atkins, John Baldessari, Yto Barrada, Vanessa Beecroft, Alighiero e Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Glenn Brown, Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Chuck Close, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Thomas Demand, Trisha Donnelly, Tracey Emin, Omer Fast, Robert Frank, Katharina Fritsch, Cyprien Gaillard, Ellen Gallagher, Adrian Ghenie, Gilbert & George, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Dan Graham, Andreas Gursky, David Hammons, Rachel Harrison, Christian Jankowski, Annette Kelm, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Jannis Kounellis, Lee Kit, Zoe Leonard, Liu Xiaodong, Paul McCarthy, Marilyn Minter, Tracey Moffatt, Jean-Luc Mylayne, Bruce Nauman, Gabriel Orozco, Richard Phillips, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, RH Quaytman, Charles Ray, Jason Rhoades, Pipilotti Rist, Ugo Rondinone, Mika Rottenberg, Thomas Ruff, Anri Sala, Wilhelm Sasnal, Gregor Schneider, Shirana Shahbazi, Cindy Sherman, Roman Signer, Dayanita Singh, Hito Steyerl, Beat Streuli, Thomas Struth, Sturtevant, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sam Taylor-Wood, Diana Thater, Rosemarie Trockel, Wolfgang Tillmans, Danh Vo, Charline von Heyl, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Wool, and Yang Fudong.

Parkett editions, from top: Doug Aitken, Decrease the Mass and Run like Hell, 1999, for Parkett 57; Vanessa Beecroft, untitled, 1999, for Parkett 56; Andy Warhol, untitled, 1987, for Parkett 12, 1987; David Hammons, Money Tree, 1992, for Parkett 31; Wolfgang Tillmans, Parkett edition 1992–1998, for Parkett 53; Trisha Donnelly, The Dashiell Delay, 2006 (2), for Parkett 77; Shirana Shahbazi, Composition with Mountain, 2014, for Parkett 94; Sigmar Polke, Desastres und andere bare Wunder, 1982–1984, for Parkett 2; Cindy Sherman, untitled, 1991, for Parkett 29; Jannis Kounellis, untitled, 1985, for Parkett 6; Tracey Emin, Self-Portrait, 12.11.01, for Parkett 63; Franz Ackermann, Peak Season, 2003, for Parkett 68. Images courtesy and © the artists and Parkett.


THE WAREHOUSE EYES OF JASON RHOADES

The daily mundanity of Los Angeles (or any other city) cannot be appreciated while riding in a car. In the slog of walking north on Alameda from 8th Street, on my way to the Arts District, I stopped at a warehouse/storefront—one of hundreds in the area—selling shelf upon shelf of objects, as far as the eye could see. Plastic, metal, animated, illuminated, fabricated—a catastrophic mountain of use and re-use later invoked by JASON RHOADES: INSTALLATIONS, 1994–2006, an exhibition that takes over most of the gallery space at the Hauser & Wirth complex. According to a wall text, Rhoades saw “shopping as a sculptural gesture.” This is the studio, its production, and the cutting-room floor all in one.

“[Jason Rhoades’] work was way more complicated than this idea that it was about California, or about America….There was kind of a fog in it….It wasn’t so easy to find your way into it sometimes.” — Paul McCarthy*

Divided into six installations—Swedish Erotica and Fiero Parts (1994), My Brother / Brancuzi (1995), The Creation Myth (1998), My Madinah: In pursuit of my ermitage (2004), The Black Pussy…and the Pagan Idol Workshop (2005), and Tijuanatanjierchandelier (2006)—the show was organized by Paul Schimmel, his last before departing the gallery in February 2017.

 

JASON RHOADES: INSTALLATIONS, 1994–2006, through May 21, 2017.

HAUSER & WIRTH LOS ANGELES, 901 East 3rd Street, Arts District.

hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/3073/jason-rhoades-installations-1994-y-2006/view/

 

*Diane Haithman, “He Left Behind One Last Puzzle,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2006.

Jason Rhoades Image: Semotan

Jason Rhoades
Image: Semotan