Edward Joseph Ruscha, 6753 Selma Avenue, 1965 - Courtesy of the artist & Zander gallery
TITLE_NAME :
Ed Ruscha - Photographs
25/01/2025 - 14/03/2025
Zander Gallery
The exhibition "Ed Ruscha – Photographs" features a selection of work by the American artist from the 1960s to the 2010s. His work defies easy categorization as Pop Art or Conceptual Art, hence the writer J.G. Ballard once simply described him as having the “coolest gaze in American art.” His imagery is rooted in the West Coast lifestyle and topography: the phenomena of mass culture and the myths of Hollywood and the open road. Inspired by Walker Evans and Robert Frank, he went on a journey taking apparently casual photographs of gas stations along Route 66 between his home-town Oklahoma City and Los Angeles. Prints from this first series, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, is presented alongside photographic works of mundane architectures in the same factual aesthetics: Apartment Buildings, Swimming Pools, Parking Lots, Products. Rucha’s innovative use of bold typography often seems at odds with painterly backgrounds, reflecting the fact that larger-than-life billboards have become part of the landscape. In a featured set of photogravures with screenprints, Country Cityscapes, 2001, it is the ominous absence of text that commands the foreground. Blank redaction marks are set against majestic mountain views. The corresponding individual titles read like ransom notes. Ruscha has explored the American scenery’s iconic entanglement with the culture of advertisement in his work across genres.
25/01/2025 - 14/03/2025
Zander Gallery
The exhibition "Ed Ruscha – Photographs" features a selection of work by the American artist from the 1960s to the 2010s. His work defies easy categorization as Pop Art or Conceptual Art, hence the writer J.G. Ballard once simply described him as having the “coolest gaze in American art.” His imagery is rooted in the West Coast lifestyle and topography: the phenomena of mass culture and the myths of Hollywood and the open road. Inspired by Walker Evans and Robert Frank, he went on a journey taking apparently casual photographs of gas stations along Route 66 between his home-town Oklahoma City and Los Angeles. Prints from this first series, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, is presented alongside photographic works of mundane architectures in the same factual aesthetics: Apartment Buildings, Swimming Pools, Parking Lots, Products. Rucha’s innovative use of bold typography often seems at odds with painterly backgrounds, reflecting the fact that larger-than-life billboards have become part of the landscape. In a featured set of photogravures with screenprints, Country Cityscapes, 2001, it is the ominous absence of text that commands the foreground. Blank redaction marks are set against majestic mountain views. The corresponding individual titles read like ransom notes. Ruscha has explored the American scenery’s iconic entanglement with the culture of advertisement in his work across genres.