Hauser & Wirth at Art Cologne 2016

‘There from the beginning, Jackson, McCarthy and Rhoades represent the essence of Hauser & Wirth’s programme; they have pushed the boundaries of what art is and can be. These three artists truly promoted cross-pollination, generously sharing their ideas and teaching younger artists, it is something really quite rare. They are part of our family and are in our DNA.’ – Iwan Wirth To coincide with the recent launch of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in Los Angeles, Hauser & Wirth’s presentation for Art Cologne 2016 highlights three artists who are at the heart of LA’s cultural history and who helped define the gallery’s identity in its early years. Richard Jackson, Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades were each others’ friends, students, mentors, collaborators, agitators, and at times, meaningful rivals. They were the likely insiders as well as the willing outsiders to the local and international art scene, and they remain at the core of the Hauser & Wirth narrative. Since the early 1970s, Richard Jackson has been a pre-eminent figure in American contemporary art, expanding the definition of painting to include new performative dimensions, merging it with sculpture, and repositioning it as an art of everyday. Influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and action painting, Jackson’s explores a performative painting process through his room-size ‘environments’, monumental stacked canvases and ‘activated’ machine sculptures. For Jackson, paint is not merely a tool used to create a representational image, but is used as a ubiquitous liquid which is smeared, splattered and sprayed over the surface of his installations and sculptures. Between 1970 and the latter half of the 1980s, Jackson created only site-specific work – each piece realised within the gallery or museum space and then destroyed when the exhibition closed. For Art Cologne 2016, Jackson is returning to this approach, producing two ‘wall paintings’ within the confines of the Hauser & Wirth booth. Created by smearing painted, still-wet canvases across a wall space, the bright, graphic abstractions are an exercise of chance. Jackson was an influential mentor to Jason Rhoades whilst teaching at UCLA in the early 1990s and Rhoades was often found working at Jackson’s studio, earning him the nickname of ‘Jason the Mason’. They maintained a close friendship until Rhoades’ death in 2006. 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 vigour 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, not only as someone who commands the respect of his peers, but as an artist who redefined the arena in which art is possible. The conditions under which art is made, shown, and consumed were sources of enormous interest for Rhoades. His work could be dangerous, overwhelming, politically incorrect, obnoxious, or utterly sublime – for Rhoades, creative process demanded ultimate freedom. Among his work presented at Art Cologne 2016 is ‘Pussy Table (after Gerhard Richter’s ‘Kleiner Akt’) (2001), a low-set leather and aluminum table, inspired by the underwear worn by the female figure in Gerhard Richter’s painting ‘Kleiner Act’ (1967). Sculptures from his Idol series, ‘Junk (Idol 36)’ (2005) and ‘Kit Kat (Idol 52)’ (2005) – formed from scrawled neon words and an assemblage of everyday items – will also be on view. The Idols belong to one of his final creations ‘The Black Pussy... and the Pagan Idol Workshop’: 360 lonely sculptures and idols that Rhoades brought together to create a monumental installation in London in 2005. Rhoades’ exhibition questioned ideas of idolatry within a materialist, celebrity-obsessed American culture. Rhoades also studied under McCarthy at UCLA. From their mutual admiration grew a collaborative relationship, which led them to pursue many projects together in the coming years. Through intensive phases of working collectively, they transported ideas into their own personal cosmos, yet each artist remained recognizable as individual. McCarthy’s constantly evolving oeuvre is characterized by wildly dark humor, Bacchanalian chaos, and tragicomic narratives. He has mined his preoccupying themes across media and decades. McCarthy unleashes debauchery and desire with extreme technical daring, charting a territory where our fundamental impulses collide with our most cherished myths and hypocritical societal norms. His work locates the traumas lurking behind the gleaming stage set of the American Dream and identifies their place in accepted art history. At Art Cologne 2016, Hauser & Wirth will show a large-scale silicone bust, ‘White Snow Head’ (2012). The work is part of the artist’s ongoing White Snow project inspired by the famous 19th-century German folk tale, ‘Snow White’, or ‘Schneewittchen’, and the modern interpretation of that story in Disney’s beloved 1937 animated adaptation, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’.