SALTS is pleased to present The Night Holds Terror, an exhibition by Emanuel Röhss, which forms part of the artist’s current examination of the relationship between The Ennis House in Los Angeles (Frank Frank Lloyd Wright, 1924), and the entertainment industry, most notably Hollywood Motion Pictures. For this exhibition Rhöss is appropriating the language of movie set fabrication, yet neither the content nor the layout of the show are direct adaptations of the original house or any of the films related to it. The installation is devised after a new narrative that the artist developed from a range of stories he assembled in tandem with his research of the Ennis House world.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s sources of inspiration—the main Mayan temple in Uxmal, Mexico, and his progressive rationale for modern architecture—where the seminal principles ac- cording to which the house was developed. Although such references are still palpable, the building is in a constant decay and was soon colonized by the local film industry with increasing velocity, who applied its aesthetics to an ever growing range of movie set. From a sci-fi apartment, time machine, love nest, or cyborg battlefield, to a dandy home and head- quarters for the Yakuza mob; the architectonic signature of the godfather of American modernism has slowly become the prime location for Hollywoodized domesticity. 

Drawing from such sources as The Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger, 1975), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), T3 and Michael Jacksons music video Why (1996), the video games Minecraft and Half Life II, Helmut Newtons’ shoot of Barbara Leigh for Playboy Magazine (1990), as well as the TV show Invitation to Love in Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1992), to mention only but a few, Rhöss has shaped his own narrative based on characters, elements and environments that are either literal appropriations or amalgamations of his research. Himself a protagonists of the story, he features with his girlfriend breaking into the house, inside which both are faced with a number of challenges that they need to overcome in order to find out the secrets kept by the House... 

Röhss’ project deals with the mediation of the house in the many contexts that the Hollywood industry has given a vast audience access to; a building that isn’t anymore only a shell for habitation, nor a machine to live in, but instead an animate organism fueled by the narratives and events it has served as a stage for and the many individuals that transited through it. Like a House On Haunted Hill (as in the 1959 horror movie) it has a greater autonomy than any of its inhabitants. Any visitor will become affected by it’s power - which may give you joy but at night it will most certainly hold terror for you.

The Night Holds Terror is the second part of an exhibition trilogy that succeeds an initial iteration at Johan Berggren Gallery (Malmö, Summer 2015), and will be followed by a third show at Thomas Duncan Gallery (Los Angeles, January - February 2016).  Röhss’ first artist book, Location Scout, due to be released by CURA at LA Art Book Fair (MOCA, Los Angeles) on February 12-14, 2016 interrogates the same subject matter and will be the projects fourth installment.