"Jason Rhoades: The Black Pussy... and The Pagan Idol Workshop"
2005-09-21 until 2005-10-29
Hauser and Wirth London
London, , UK United Kingdom

Hauser & Wirth London are proud to announce their forthcoming exhibition of new work by Jason Rhoades, entitled The Black Pussy ...and The Pagan Idol Workshop. For this site-specific installation, Rhoades has extensively researched an era in the history of the Ka'bah prior to the emergence of Islam. Before Islam, various cults and Arabic tribes made use of the holy shrine ‘Ka’ba’ to worship forms of idolatry, from pagan deities to figures relating to cultural gods. There were 360 such idols within and around the shrine,  which were subsequently destroyed by the Prophet Muhammed when he rededicated the site to One God.

In exploring the notion of the idol in contemporary society, Rhoades has spread through the main gallery space and Vault Room of Hauser & Wirth hundreds of different artefacts and texts that serve as a palette, alluding to the lonely sculptures and idols of the pre-Islamic Ka’ba.

For Rhoades, the prospect of our society worshipping at the shrine of consumerism is equally as perplexing as the worship of the idols in the time prior to Islam; he is attempting to emphasise the chaos and clutter of commercialism, its falsehood and the lack of clear vision that accompanies it.

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