Art Metropole

Common to Jason Rhoades’s multifarious output is an underlying interest in the conditions in which art is made and the subversion of any conventions that stand in the way of its production. Up to his untimely death in 2006 at age 41, Rhoades carried out a continuous assault on aesthetic conventions and the rules governing the art world: these conditions, in fact, were used as materials or tools for his work. His conceptual vigor and his attempts to redefine and expand the space in which works are both made and exhibited earned him a reputation as an artists’ artist. Believing that the creative process demanded ultimate freedom, his work could be dangerous, overwhelming, politically incorrect, obnoxious, or sublime.

In 1993, Rhoades received his M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Later that year, he joined David Zwirner—becoming part of the gallery’s original roster of artists—and had his first New York solo exhibition.

Jason Rhoades, Four Roads will mark the first major American museum exhibition of the artist’s work since his death and is planned for September 2013 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Significant solo exhibition at international venues include the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2006); Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2005); Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (2000); and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (1999).

Rhoades was featured in a number of recent group exhibitions at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annadale-on-Hudson, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; Tate Liverpool, England; among others. Other important group exhibitions include the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); and the Danish Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999).

Work by the artist is included in prominent collections internationally, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Brian Jungen was born in 1970 on a family farm north of Fort St. John, British Columbia. His father was Swiss born and immigrated to British Columbia with his family when he was three years old. Jungen’s mother was Aboriginal, a member of the Dane-zaa Nation. Jungen was seven years old when both his parents perished in a fire. After which he was raised by his fathers’ sister and her husband. Jungen recalls his mother’s ability to adapt objects to new uses, something he now famously does within his artistic practice. He recalls “She was constantly trying to extend the life of things, packages, utensils. Once we had to use the back end of a pickup truck as an extension for our hog pen.”

In 1988 he moved to Vancouver to attend the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He graduated four years later with a Diploma of Visual Art. After which he moved to Montreal and New York City prior to returning to Vancouver.

In 1998 he took part in a self-directed residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta. This residency would become the tipping point in his career. As it was there that he began to work on his now famous Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005); a series of sculptures he created by disassembling and reassembling Nike Air Jordan sneakers to resemble Northwest Coast Aboriginal masks. He would go on to explore his interest in using sports paraphernalia creating sculptures out of catchers mitts, baseball bats, and basket ball jerseys. Jungen has stated that it is a deliberate choice to create works out of materials produced by the sports industry; an industry that appropriates Aboriginal terminology, such as the team names The Chiefs, Indians, Redskins and Braves. However Jungen’s work is not exclusively tied to his heritage. He has stated “My involvement with my family and traditions is personal – it’s not where my art comes from.”

His interest in architecture and in particular Buckminster Fuller is also evident in his practice with his creation of multiple shelters for humans, animals and birds. Overriding the majority of his work is Jungen’s ability to disassemble and reassemble objects maintaining the integrity and meaning of his source material and yet creating new possibilities for meaning Shapeshifter (2000) / Transmutation (2000).

Brian Jungen was the winner of the inaugural Sobey Art Award in 2002 and the 2010 Gershon Iskowitz Prize.

Douglas Gordon was the recipient of the 1996 Turner Prize, the 1997 Venice Biennial’s Premio 2000 award, the 1998 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the 2008 Roswitha Haftmann Prize, and the 2012 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. His work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2006); Timeline, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006, traveled to MALBA Colección Costantini, Buenos Aires through 2007); Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989…, the MART, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy (2006); Superhumanatural, the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2006); Between Darkness and Light: Works 1989–2007, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2007); Blood, Sweat, Tears DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2009); Tate Britain, London (2010), and Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (2011) and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Will open January 2013). Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival before screenings at numerous international venues. k.364 premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2010, and Henry Rebel: Drawing and Burning premiered at Art Basel’s Art Unlimited in 2012.

Gordon lives and works in Berlin and Glasgow.

Installation, Performance, and Conceptual artist Dan Graham (American, b.1942) is best known for his pioneering advances in Video Art as well as his highly-conceptual installations, which facilitate specific interactions between viewers. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he moved to New Jersey as a young man and in 1962 opened the John Daniels Gallery in New York, his first official foray into the art world. There he showed the work of Conceptual and Minimalist artists, such as Sol LeWitt (American, 1928–2007) and Donald Judd (American, 1928–1994), and began creating works himself during this time, influenced by similar reductive aesthetics. Beginning in the late 1960s, he worked with photography, documenting houses in both urban and suburban areas, which he later published in a magazine format, accompanied by texts in his Homes for America series. In the 1970s, he was a leading proponent of Performance and Video Art, before turning to an installation format to create architectural sites provoking interactions between viewers and public spaces. He often also used video, mirrors, and other materials in innovative ways to explore the relationship formed between the audience and the artwork. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany, the Museu Serralves in Portugal, and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. He has also exhibited his work in several Documenta exhibitions in Kassel. In addition to his work as an artist, Graham is also an acclaimed cultural critic and theorist, and has published several significant books over the past three decades. He currently lives and works in New York City.