Jason Rhoades
My Madinah: in pursuit of my ermitage…
13 June – 12 September 2004
Hauser & Wirth Collection
Grunbergstrasse 7, 9000
St. Gallen / Switzerland
T:+41 71 228 55 55
F:+41 71 228 55 59
www.hauserwirthcollection.org
Private Contractor: Roberto Ohrt
Opening Reception
Sunday June 13, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
My Madinah is the hitherto most important stage of an adventure which began some years ago in the United States, when Jason Rhoades traveled from Los Angeles to Mecca, east-south-east going towards Mexico. In this little place, not far from Salton Sea, Rhoades came up with a plan, namely to make a centre for his own art at this very spot, an ‘ermitage’ comprising elements from various projects – both realized and as yet unrealized – from the visions, modus operandi and narratives that they generated, and from all those ‘propositions’ that the new sign ‘Mecca’ would offer in the future.
Last year preparations had reached the point where it was possible to present the exhibition Meccatuna in the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, in which a small group of forms was activated – including a Kaaba and a first series of ‘lights’. The Roundhouse in St. Gallen is not only the setting for the next step. The old locomotive shed itself – as an example of ideal architecture – has been incorporated into the functioning of the plan; on its coordinates the roundhouse figures as a model of the structure to be built in the desert landscape by Salton Sea. Or to put it more precisely: the present exhibition projects it there.
