Artist Spotlight
In his photographs, Roe Ethridge uses the real to suggest—or disrupt—the ideal. Through commercial images of fashion models, products, and advertisements, as well as intimate moments from his own daily life, he subverts the residual authority of established artistic genres such as the still life or the portrait, merging them with the increasingly pervasive image culture of the present. The continuous cross-pollination of fine art and applied photography has come to be the hallmark of Ethridge’s practice.
Created in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one week at a time, whose exhibitions have been affected by the health crisis. A single artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Roe Ethridge features a work directly from his exhibition Old Fruit, his first solo show with the gallery in New York. The work will be unveiled below on Friday, May 1, at 6am edt. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Vincent Dilio
In Conversation
Roe Ethridge and Antwaun Sargent
From his early work for magazines in the 1990s to recent projects with the designer Telfar Clemens, Roe Ethridge has consistently challenged the distinctions between commercial and conceptual photography that long defined the medium. Antwaun Sargent recently caught up with him to discuss the moment that confirmed the artist’s understanding of the photographic image’s potential for boundary-hopping ubiquity in the contemporary era.
Shortlist
Twelve Tracks: Roe Ethridge
Roe Ethridge shares the transportive powers of his playlist “Teenage Chemicals in 1985,” a soundtrack that began playing in those formative years and hasn’t stopped since.
Roe Ethridge
During a conversation with David Rimanelli, Roe Ethridge reflected on photographs that he made during the late 1990s and early 2000s after moving to New York. They spoke as Ethridge was preparing for his exhibition Old Fruit.
Self-Reflections: Roe Ethridge Innocence II
Angela Brown considers the wide-ranging photographs included in Roe Ethridge: Innocence II.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
Exhibition
Roe Ethridge
Happy Birthday Louise Parker
February 21–April 5, 2024
10 Corso Como, Milan
10corsocomo.com
Specially conceived for the reimagined spaces of the gallery at 10 Corso Como, Happy Birthday Louise Parker brings together a selection of iconic photographs from the past fifteen years by Roe Ethridge, including previously unreleased works. Curated by Alessandro Rabottini, the exhibition draws its title from the alluring presence of Louise Parker, a model with whom Ethridge collaborated on several fashion editorials starting in 2010. Over the years, the two became friends and Ethridge had the opportunity to portray Parker both inside and outside the framework of the fashion industry.
Installation view, Roe Ethridge: Happy Birthday Louise Parker, 10 Corso Como, Milan, February 21–April 5, 2024. Artwork © Roe Ethridge. Photo: Alessandro Saletta–DSL Studio
Book Signing
Roe Ethridge
American Polychronic
Saturday, February 25, 2023, 4–5pm
Gagosian Shop, New York
To celebrate the publication of his new monograph, American Polychronic, Roe Ethridge will sign copies of the book in front of his exhibition of the same name at Gagosian, New York. The comprehensive volume documents Ethridge’s work from 1999 to 2022, focusing on two interlocking threads of his celebrated photographic practice. The photographs move fluidly between genres in pursuit of a distinctive visual language—blending and playfully juxtaposing the realms of fine art, fashion imagery, and advertising with the everyday, personal, and generic. The book includes a new essay by Jamieson Webster and a conversation between the artist and Antwaun Sargent. Published by MACK, it will be available for purchase at the event, which is free to attend.
Roe Ethridge: American Polychronic (New York: MACK, 2023)
Video
Interview with Roe Ethridge
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
In this video, produced on the occasion of an exhibition of work by artists shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011, Roe Ethridge speaks about his photographs of the of the 2000s. Describing his work as “American by default,” he discusses his subject matter and playing with the idea of the visual fugue, or devising sequences of pictures with multiple voices and counterpoints, as in a score or song.
Installation view, Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011: Roe Ethridge, Ampica P3, London, 2011. Artwork © Roe Ethridge
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
Objects of Desire
Photography and the Language of Advertising
September 4–December 18, 2022
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
www.lacma.org
Objects of Desire traces the artistic manipulation of advertising through the works of photo-based artists. Since the 1970s, creative innovations have led to dramatic shifts in the possibilities for photography as artistic expression, and these artists have reworked and exploited the vocabulary and strategies of advertising to challenge the increased commodification of daily life. Through re-photography, appropriation, and simulation, these artists challenge the viewer to determine what exactly these pictures are asking of us. Work by Chris Burden and Roe Ethridge is included.
Chris Burden, The TV Commercials 1973–1977, 1973–77/2000 (still) © 2022 Chris Burden/Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
Closed
Roe Ethridge in
New Visions: The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media
February 21–September 13, 2020
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway
hok.no
Bringing together recent work by thirty-one international artists, the inaugural edition of the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter’s triennial foregrounds practices that acknowledge the fluctuating and networked condition of contemporary photography and society. Work by Roe Ethridge is included.
Roe Ethridge, Cat with Yarn Ball, 2017 © Roe Ethridge
Closed
Pictures from Another Wall
The Collection of Huis Marseille at De Pont
February 15–August 30, 2020
De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands
depont.nl
On view in the De Pont Museum’s new wing are roughly one hundred contemporary photographic works from the collection of its sister institution, Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, with an emphasis on acquisitions of the past five years. Work by Roe Ethridge and Andreas Gursky is included.
Roe Ethridge, Annabella for SEPP, 2012 © Roe Ethridge
Closed
Mad World
August 18, 2018–January 14, 2019
Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles
marcianoartfoundation.org
Mad World brought together works from the Marciano collection reflecting the rampant absurdities of contemporary life. Many of the exhibited works address the overwhelming accumulation of information, images, and ideas emanating from our phones, computers, billboards, televisions, and radios. Work by Roe Ethridge, Urs Fischer, and Nate Lowman was included.
Urs Fischer, Green Solace, 16 Handles, Red Solace, 2017 © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman