Ed Ruscha / Year after year
Current exhibition
Overview
Vedovi Gallery is proud to announce "Year after year" an exhibition dedicated to the work of Ed Ruscha. As one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century, this presentation offers an in-depth exploration of Ruscha’s pioneering paintings and drawings. Ruscha’s long standing career is exemplified within this exhibition, chronicling the artist’s expansive formal trajectory through a collection of works spanning five decades of artistic exploration.
Renowned for his innovative use of language in visual art, Ed Ruscha transforms words into striking, thought-provoking compositions. His unique typography combines evocative color fields and landscape compositions that resonate with the history of cinema while embodying the West Coast aesthetic that has come to define the artist’s work. Through irony, humor, and cultural critique, Ruscha explores the poetic potential of everyday language while offering commentary on modern life and its landscapes.
"Year after year" presents a curated selection of works from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. Included in this presentation are some of Ruscha’s most significant paintings and drawings, which encapsulate his distinctive techniques and critical acclaim. Highlighting Ruscha’s ability to imbue imagery with cinematic significance "Year after year" unfurls like film, showcasing the artist’s ongoing challenge to notions of perception and definition over time.
Ruscha’s is celebrated for his unique ability to turn language into both subject and object. His use of bold, isolated words—often rendered in clean, hyperrealist fonts—compels the viewer to read between the lines. Works such as Clock (1968) and Royal (1971) produced with the careful application of gunpowder, suggest both imminent danger and meticulous control. She gets angry at him (1974), composed with egg yolk stain on moiré textile, furthers the artist’s approach to using unconventional materials as an additional language of signification, executed with impeccable precision.
Works such as Pico and Sepulveda (G.1895) (2001) and Flatlands Flagstaff To Tulsa (2000) reflect Ruscha’s fascination with the Los Angeles landscape, evoking the sprawling asphalt cityscapes of America’s urban expansion through illusionistic grids. Trail of Prunes (1975) and Suspension (1968) depict diffused gradient fields that echo the big California skies essential Ruscha’s aesthetic influence. Exploring themes of perception, ephemerality, and perspective, these works underscore Ruscha’s mastery in pushing the very boundaries of how language can operate within visual culture.
Conversely, Ruscha’s shadow paintings offer an additional perspective on his exploration of subject matter. Asea (1995) and Old Sign (1989) epitomize this distinctive series where compositions rendered in dense foreboding shadow, lack an explicit rendering of text, yet allude to its presence. These works, often painted in soft, illusionistic tones, suggest a cinematic movement of symbols across a shallow depth of field.
Ed Ruscha’s imagery alludes to the way language operates as a fundamental element of our reality. In an era where images dominate our networked lives, Ruscha’s artworks continue to invite viewers to reconsider the fundamental perception of our visual world.
Works
