- Venue
- Gagosian Gallery
- Location
- London
I imagine that artist Ed Ruscha likes driving around Los Angeles. In his car the weight of traffic flow will dictate what his eye will light upon. Depositories, construction sites, and warehouses play a dance of chance composition with imperative signage. ‘HONK’, ‘CO.’, ‘TECH CHEM’ or ‘TRADE SCHOOL’. The phrases that have been used both as a part and the central subject of his paintings are lifted out of the idiom of modern urban highways.
Another experience that the mundane repetitions of commuting might allow the artist is the sense of comparison of non-descript locations over a period of time. Ruscha’s exhibition particularly focuses on his interest in the possibilities of comparative study by presenting 5 pairs of paintings that treat the same subjects mauled, eroded or reframed by its surroundings.
This form of comparative study, described well in Walker Evans’ description of the photograph as ‘seeing for the future’ is an approach that has long been in the armoury of the documentary photographer. So by painting on huge canvases Ruscha creates a sense of displacement between his chosen medium and our expectations.
While the camera records rapidly and the print encourages the photographer to return again to measure change in a specific location, canvas and pigment feel much less suited to the approach. Ruscha’s plays upon this dislocation by painting newly constructed warehouse surfaces as flat blocks of colour without care for perspective. The apparent amateurism further emphasizes the non-naturalistic approach in the comparative canvases. So while in the gallery notes Ruscha is quoted as saying ‘if you give the viewer something to compare they don’t have to interpret,’ the viewer is both drawn to a comparison of the scene and pulled away from it by the uniqueness of each canvas.
Like a number of the canvases on show at the recent Hayward Gallery exhibition The Painting of Modern Life, which essayed influence of the photograph on modern painting, Ruscha seems to be offering us something that falls deliberately between the modern and archaic.