Jason Rhoades: Black Pussy

Jason Rhoades' untimely death in 2006 at age 41 cut short a career which, through the sheer audacity, scope, and ambition of his prolific artistic output since 1993, promised to make him one of the defining artists of his generation. While often perceived as a maverick–constantly changing styles, materials, and intellectual approaches for each project, it is the very continuity and reoccurrence of Rhoades' most important concepts and concerns throughout his career that is the hallmark of his final exhibition, Black Pussy, conceived by the artist in 2005 and 2006 and completed in Rhoades' studio shortly before his death.

The last installment in a trilogy of work that includes Meccatuna (2003) and My Madinah: in pursuit of my ermitage…(2004), Black Pussy remains one of Rhoades’ most mysterious works, and his most ambitious. Sprawling roughly 3,000 square feet, the work presents itself as a large installation, dominated by an empty stage bearing a neon sign which reads "Live in the Black Pussy." The work also features 185 neon pussy word signs, as part of the artist’s ongoing project of creating a cross-cultural compendium of synonyms for female genitalia. Large storage racks are covered with myriad objects, including hundreds of Egyptian Hookah pipes from a seized shipping container, over 350 unique Dream Catchers (a traditional Native American fetish object used to filter dreams), 89 beaver-felt cowboy hats, 72 Chinese Scholar stones, Venetian glass vegetables (and Chinese knock-offs), colorful cloth rugs, a homemade aluminum replica of Jeff Koons' famous stainless steel Rabbit (1986), and more. To one side, a large macramé textile object covers the wall. Beyond the formal juxtapositions created, the individual elements in the massive installation interact symbolically, communicating dichotomous relationships of masculine versus feminine, Eastern versus Western traditions, the handmade versus the massproduced, and the authentic versus the fake.

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