ART CITIES:Beverly Hills-Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha’s photography, drawing, painting, and artist books record the shifting emblems of American life in the last half century. His deadpan representations of Hollywood logos, stylized gas stations, and archetypal landscapes distil the imagery of popular culture into a language of cinematic and typographical codes that are as accessible as they are profound.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Ed Ruscha Prints and Photographs” is a survey of Ed Ruscha’s prints over 40 years, together with rarely seen photographs produced since 1959, is on presentation at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. Attracted to the reproducibility accidents specific to the medium, Ruscha began making lithographic editions in the early ‘60s, infusing the Pop and Conceptual sensibilities of the time with vernacular wit and melancholy. The quartet of gas stations “Standard Station, Mocha Standard, Cheese Mold Standard with Olive, and Double Standard” (1966–69) merge Euclidean space with Renaissance perspective and word-play, while depictions of the Hollywood Sign and its surrounding hills convey an attitude to the region’s landscape, at once scientific and romantic, natural and artificial In richly colored lithographs, catchy yet meaningless terms, such as “WALL ROCKET” (2013), “JET BABY” (2011), and “SPONGE PUDDLE” (2015), are set against dramatic mountainscapes in scenic conflations of linguistic and visual appropriation. Unique color trial proofs and cancellation proofs are presented alongside prints from the editions to show the evolutive process by which Ruscha decides on a final image. Ruscha’s early photographs also provided foundations for his broader artistic practice. Isolating overlooked quotidian subjects, he used the camera to “Flatten” the images he intended to draw and paint, from apartment buildings to commodities and comestibles, such as raisins and bottles of turpentine. Ruscha’s deadpan representations of archetypal signs and symbols distill the imagery of popular culture into cinematic and typographical codes that are as accessible as they are profound. His choice of words and phrases draws upon the moments of incidental ambiguity implicit in the interplay between language and image. Although his inspirations are undeniably rooted in his close observation of American vernacular, his elegantly laconic art speaks to more complex and widespread issues regarding the appearance, feel, and function of the world and our tenuous and transient place within it.
Info: Organizer: Bob Monk, Gagosian Gallery, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, Duration: 28/7-9/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com
