ART-PRESENTATION:Ed Ruscha-Dedication Stones

In more than sixty years, Ed Ruscha has built an oeuvre encompassing conceptual photographs, paintings, drawings, artist’s books, prints, and films that chronicle the development of the American West and of Los Angeles in particular in a singular artistic idiom. Widely acclaimed as a sober-minded and dispassionate witness and historian, outspoken and enigmatic at once, Ruscha is gifted with a keen sense for linguistic humor and the comedy of everyday life.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Archive

Ed Ruscha continues to influence contemporary artists worldwide, his formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular evolving in form and meaning as technology and internet platforms alter the essence of human communication. Presenting a litany of familiar icons including snow-capped mountains and the American flag, Ed Ruscha applies a wry verbal and visual wit to his chosen subjects, exploring the frequent disconnect between ideas and their expression, and celebrating the beauty of what he calls “everyday noise”. In each of the “Dedication Stones” drawings, Ruscha renders a different short word or symbol containing the letter x, which for him represents the ultimate variable, an endlessly adaptable surrogate for other ideas. It is also a literal component of the various terms and names he illustrates—Bix, Mix, Fix, Tax, and so on—the use of similar-sounding words recalling Ruscha’s screen-print portfolio News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues (1970). Viewed and read sequentially, the words also prompt a staccato enunciation that begins to supersede their established meanings. But while Ruscha engages with the words as abstract lingual units, their cultural associations ultimately remain in play; each drawing bears a subtitle that places its subject in a specific context. Often, these display the artist’s droll sense of humor, thus “Fix (Dedicated to the 1919 World Series)” references the notorious baseball game-rigging scandal; “XXX (Dedicated to a Jug of Whiskey)” alludes to the traditional marker of triple distillation on containers of moonshine; and “Xit (Dedicated to Ways Out)” (all 2021) employs a deliberate misspelling. At the same time, the gray tonality, stippled texture, classical serif fonts, and trompe l’oeil pins of the drawings suggest chiseled stone, galvanizing an association with monuments and tombstones—even as their ‘torn’ edges seem to depict paper surfaces. Beyond simply paying tribute, then, they might also be read as commemorating or presaging the demise of their subjects; while some works feature living people and extant places, among them are also legendary figures of the past, such as the great jazz trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke and the racing car driver Jacky Ickx.

Photo: Ed Ruscha, XXX (Dedicated to a Jug of Whiskey), 2021 Acrylic and pencil on museum board, 15 × 20 inches (38.1 × 50.8 cm, © Ed Ruscha, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Info: Hindergässli 1, Saanen, Switzerland, Duration: 16/7-26/9/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 14:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com