Jason Rhoades

ArtForum, Oct, 2004 by Daniel Birnbaum

Everything goes pop! pop! like bubbles constantly exploding. Here in LA, it's a wasteland, the beginning and end of the world. There's so much garbage but also strange, quiet things I've never found anywhere else. Making bubbles, making foam and this action is my job. The water here contains everything. It's as sick and contaminated as culture is. I stir it up and make it rotten.... Warhol and Oldenburg and all those guys, they cut down trees and cleared territory. They made a place where things could happen, and we're all living off that. Culture today is foamy and fluid, and changing all the time. I can constantly move from IKEA to Jamba Juice to under a small shrub in the mountains. Last week I went to Ozzy Ozbourne's Ozzfest, with all those speed metal bands. A huge bunch of angry white people--so pure and low. The parking lot of Ozzfest was one of the most amazing things I've seen for a long time. The beautiful thing about bubbles is that they reflect you and the world. They're so psychedelic. And then they go pop! Warhol's bubble might have deflated a bit, but I don't think people would have let it pop. Or did it without anyone noticing?

--AS TOLD TO DANIEL BIRNBAUM

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