LOS ANGELES.- Los Angeles artist Jason Rhoades, who became more celebrated in Europe than in the United States for elaborate installations that broke down conventional walls between performance and conventional art, died Tuesday at the age of 41.

“Mr. Rhoades emerged professionally in the early 1990’s, when artists like Matthew Barney and Cady Noland were also creating symbolically charged environments out of unlikely commercial and industrial products,” wrote Ken Johnson for the New York Times.

"He's one of the most important and significant artists of his generation," said Ann Goldstein, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which owns Rhoades' works. She called his untimely death "a terrible and heartbreaking tragedy."

Recently, Rhoades had been staging soirees in Los Angeles that were a form of collective performance art. Invited guests met at a storefront gallery to mingle, then a door would swing open and it was ``like Ali Baba's cave,'' said Garrels, ``with neon lights, rugs, Mexican tourist souvenirs, American Indian dreamcatchers, hookah pipes -- like a spoof on all that '60s homegrown, funky folk art.''

Jason Rhoades was born in Newcastle, California, 1965 and presently lived and workd in Los Angeles, California. His work is often spread out on the floor in many parts and occupying whole rooms. His installation pieces may include flashing lights, music and sometimes a video runs on a tiny television. "Rhoades's creations set up systems of relationships between reality, experience and the media."