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Ed Ruscha

Paintings

May 10–June 15, 2002
555 West 24th Street, New York

Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Installation view, photo by Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Ed Ruscha, Clarence Jones, 2001 Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 124 ⅛ inches (182.9 × 315.3 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Clarence Jones, 2001

Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 124 ⅛ inches (182.9 × 315.3 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Never Odd or Even, 2001 Acrylic on canvas, 64 × 72 inches (162.6 × 182.9 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Never Odd or Even, 2001

Acrylic on canvas, 64 × 72 inches (162.6 × 182.9 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Step on No Pets, 2002 Acrylic on canvas, 64 ⅛ × 72 ⅛ inches (162.9 × 183.2 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Step on No Pets, 2002

Acrylic on canvas, 64 ⅛ × 72 ⅛ inches (162.9 × 183.2 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Porch Crop, 2001 Acrylic on canvas, 64 ⅛ × 72 ⅛ inches (162.6 × 183.2 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Porch Crop, 2001

Acrylic on canvas, 64 ⅛ × 72 ⅛ inches (162.6 × 183.2 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Solo Gigoolos, 2002 Acrylic on canvas, 60 ⅛ × 60 ⅛ inches (152.7 × 152.7 cm)

Ed Ruscha, Solo Gigoolos, 2002

Acrylic on canvas, 60 ⅛ × 60 ⅛ inches (152.7 × 152.7 cm)

About

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Ed Ruscha, his first in New York since 1998.

One of the most influential artists working today, Ruscha is renowned for his unique ability to blend Pop art and Conceptual art in the medium of painting. For this exhibition, Ruscha continues to explore the subject of mountains, which he first focused on in 1998.

In a series of what the artist calls “mirror paintings,” the stylized mountains, painted with their reflections, are emblazoned with palindromes and idiosyncratic witticisms such as “SEX AT NOON TAXES” and “SOLO GIGOLOS.” The landscape and the text create a double entendre, where the painting and its text mirror each other in a visual pun. The exhibition also includes a series of “fictional paintings” with anecdotes and imagined characters that offer a glimpse of seemingly mundane events.

A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Adam Gopnik will accompany the exhibition.

Black-and-white photograph: Donald Marron, c. 1984.

Donald Marron

Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.

Alexander Calder poster for McGovern, 1972, lithograph

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

Ed Ruscha, At That, 2020, dry pigment and acrylic on paper.

“Things Fall Apart”: Ed Ruscha’s Swiped Words

Lisa Turvey examines the range of effects conveyed by the blurred phrases in recent drawings by the artist, detailing the ways these words in motion evoke the experience of the current moment.

Andy Warhol cover design for the magazine Aspen 1, no. 3.

Artists’ Magazines

Gwen Allen recounts her discovery of cutting-edge artists’ magazines from the 1960s and 1970s and explores the roots and implications of these singular publications.

A painting with gold frame by Louis Michel Eilshemius. Landscape with single figure.

Eilshemius and Me: An Interview with Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha tells Viet-Nu Nguyen and Leta Grzan how he first encountered Louis Michel Eilshemius’s paintings, which of the artist’s aesthetic innovations captured his imagination, and how his own work relates to and differs from that of this “Neglected Marvel.”

River Café menu with illustration by Ed Ruscha.

The River Café Cookbook

London’s River Café, a culinary mecca perched on a bend in the River Thames, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2018. To celebrate this milestone and the publication of her cookbook River Café London, cofounder Ruth Rogers sat down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the famed restaurant’s allure.

News

Photo: Kate Simon

Artist Spotlight

Ed Ruscha

September 16–22, 2020

At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist . . . who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Ruscha’s formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular have evolved in form and meaning as technology alters the essence of human communication.

Photo: Kate Simon

Installation view, Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, January 11–October 4, 2020. Artwork © Ed Ruscha

galleryplatform.la

Ed Ruscha
Drum Skins

May 28–June 30, 2020

Gagosian is pleased to present recent paintings by Ed Ruscha online for galleryplatform.laFifty years ago, Ruscha purchased a set of vellum drum skins from a leather shop in Los Angeles. He has continued to collect these vintage objects, and since 2011 he has used them as canvases for the works on view in his solo exhibition Drum Skins at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Installation view, Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, January 11–October 4, 2020. Artwork © Ed Ruscha