Jason Rhoades’s SLOTO

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to Jason Rhoades’s SLOTO. The Secret Life of the Onion (2003), a complex, multilayered, site-specific installation artwork in the collection of the Van Abbemuseum. [Figure 20] It introduces the problem of perpetuating a site-specific installation that includes processes of growth and transformation, not only in content but also in form. Museum professionals are often confronted with profound questions in order to keep processual artworks alive and sometimes need to make radical decisions when reinstalling the work in different contexts than foreseen by the artist. Comparative examples are Dieter Roth’s Garden Sculpture (1968–1996) and Jason Rhoades’s P.I.G. (Piece in Ghent) (1994).