Artists Rooms: Ed Ruscha


Small exhibition giving an overview of the career of Ed Ruscha.

Ruscha began work in commercial graphics for a Los Angeles advertising agency and his art references the themes and techniques of advertising. I had seen his work before but hadn’t realised how much of it was painted. I’d assumed they were screen prints or manipulated photographs as they are so realistic.

There were a number of his pictures combining idealised mountains with unrelated text and those painting realistic wood effects. I liked “Our Flag” the rather Jasper John’s like picture shown here.

There were also some of his sequences of photographs shown both on the wall and in a small side room of the books he’s made. These included his pictures of parking lots from above taken in 1967 which he then revisted in 1999 and his Hockey like swimming pools of 1968.

All the work felt like it was recording and commenting on the American Dream.

Closing end of the year

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