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Ed Ruscha | Jonas Wood

Notepads, Holograms and Books

March 30–June 17, 2017
San Francisco

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Jonas Wood, © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Jonas Wood, © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, front to back: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, front to back: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Jonas Wood, © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Jonas Wood, © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Works Exhibited

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016 Holograms, set of 4, each: 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016

Holograms, set of 4, each: 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016 (detail) Holograms, set of 4, each: 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016 (detail)

Holograms, set of 4, each: 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016 (detail) Holograms, set of 4, 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, The End #1–#4, 1998–2016 (detail)

Holograms, set of 4, 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm), edition of 23 + 2 PP
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Ed Ruscha, Oh No, 2011 Hand-drilled intaglio on gilt-edged book (The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1988 edition), 11 × 8 ⅝ × 3 ⅛ inches (27.9 × 21.9 × 7.9 cm)© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Oh No, 2011

Hand-drilled intaglio on gilt-edged book (The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1988 edition), 11 × 8 ⅝ × 3 ⅛ inches (27.9 × 21.9 × 7.9 cm)
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Baby Jet, 2010 Acrylic on book cover (Geschichten und Marchen, 1929 edition), 7 ⅜ × 5 ⅛ × ¾ inches (18.7 × 13 × 1.9 cm)© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Baby Jet, 2010

Acrylic on book cover (Geschichten und Marchen, 1929 edition), 7 ⅜ × 5 ⅛ × ¾ inches (18.7 × 13 × 1.9 cm)
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Starbrats Open Book, 2003 Acrylic on linen, 18 × 24 inches (45.7 × 61 cm)© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Starbrats Open Book, 2003

Acrylic on linen, 18 × 24 inches (45.7 × 61 cm)
© Ed Ruscha. Photo: Paul Ruscha

Jonas Wood, Untitled (V), 2017 Colored pencil on paper, 9 × 6 ¼ inches (22.9 × 15.9 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (V), 2017

Colored pencil on paper, 9 × 6 ¼ inches (22.9 × 15.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled Drawing, 2016 Colored pencil on paper, 9 ⅛ × 6 ⅛ inches (23.3 × 15.6 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled Drawing, 2016

Colored pencil on paper, 9 ⅛ × 6 ⅛ inches (23.3 × 15.6 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Larry Cicada, 2016 Pen on paper, 9 ¼ × 6 ⅛ inches (23.5 × 15.6 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Larry Cicada, 2016

Pen on paper, 9 ¼ × 6 ⅛ inches (23.5 × 15.6 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled Drawing 2, 2016 Colored pencil on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled Drawing 2, 2016

Colored pencil on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (2 Tennis Balls), 2016 Colored pencil on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (2 Tennis Balls), 2016

Colored pencil on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (P131), 2011 Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (P131), 2011

Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (Seated Male Figure), 2009 Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (Seated Male Figure), 2009

Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (Greek Spirals), 2007 Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, Untitled (Greek Spirals), 2007

Pen on paper, 6 ½ × 4 ½ inches (16.5 × 11.4 cm)
© Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood, LG NPP #1, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, LG NPP #1, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, LG NPP #2, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, LG NPP #2, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #2, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #2, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #3, 2017 Screenprint on oil and canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #3, 2017

Screenprint on oil and canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #1, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #1, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG London NPP #1, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG London NPP #1, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #2, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #2, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #3, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, Maritime NPP #3, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #1, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, WKS NPP #1, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 76 × 52 inches (193 × 132.1 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG London NPP #2, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG London NPP #2, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG HK NPP #1, 2017 Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

Jonas Wood, GG HK NPP #1, 2017

Screenprint and oil on canvas, 93 × 61 inches (236.2 × 154.9 cm)
© Jonas Wood. Photo: Brian Forrest

About

Gagosian is pleased to present Notepads, Holograms and Books, an exhibition of works by Ed Ruscha and Jonas Wood, two artists who explore the nature of the real and the represented, language and image, writing and typography. The exhibition includes paintings, holograms, and hand-modified books by Ruscha, and new paintings by Wood.

In Ruscha’s work, the traditions and techniques of graphic design and the restrained artistry of typesetting serve as vehicles for the commutation between picture and word, sign and signifier. He superimposes text and image across media: from billboards to books, from screens to paintings and holograms. With the reverence and technical mastery of a trompe l’oeil painting, Fanned Book (2012) depicts the turning pages of a bound volume with marbled endpapers. Elsewhere, Ruscha’s text paintings of phrases such as “OH NO” migrate to the spines and fore edges of actual books. Small works on canvas show granular, individual typeset alphabetic letters—examining the form, as much as the emblematic function, of the phoneme—and a hologram proclaims “THE END” in stylized letters on what appears to be vellum, making light projection resemble an archaic art. Through a shifting exchange of abstraction and figuration, the book in all its forms pervades Ruscha’s investigations of the nature of language and the distribution of information.

For Wood, shifts in scale push the limits of traditional painting genres. The still life, a recurring theme in his work, has been the subject of abstracted enlargement before. In public commissions, he has covered the facades of buildings with vivid paintings of potted plants, the overlapping leaves, shelves, and cylindrical vases taking on the grandeur of a rainforest or cityscape. In Notepads, Holograms and Books, logotyped and trademarked desk notepads are enlarged to become wall-covering canvases, which act as backdrops for paintings. Typographic emblems, such as “Gagosian Gallery” and “Maritime Hotel,” are silk-screened onto canvas, mimicking the original format of the signature-branded notepads. The impulse for these works originates in Wood’s habit of drawing on hotel and office stationery. Transposed from small drawings to large-scale compositions, the subjects of the paintings range from foliage and drawings his child made to abstract jottings that record running poker debts. The works thus straddle private and commercial zones through disorienting compressions of space and a deep attunement to patterning and color. Wood’s visual language finds a new iteration, playing between the portable and the monumental, between traditions of print and of paint, between inventions of his own and oblique responses to Ruscha’s peerless precedents.

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