Curator, Ana Torok: This painting produced in 2022 is the most recent work in the exhibition. It exemplifies this compositional formula that you see in Ruscha’s work, almost from the start of his career. He’ll superimpose a word or phrase onto an unrelated backdrop. And in this case, it’s this spot right outside his studio in Los Angeles.
He said that for him, backgrounds become simply, quote, “anonymous backdrops for the drama of words.” When you read the words out loud, “metro,” “petro,” “neuro,” “psycho,” they start to form this kind of rhyming sequence—almost as if it could go on in a loop forever.
Ruscha borrows words and phrases from many different sources. A word might come from a book or from song lyrics. Words might be overheard in conversation or may be overheard on the radio while he's driving through LA. It’s almost as if he’s plucking words from here and there, letting them stew a little bit, and then they’ll just pop up in these unexpected ways.
Artist, Ed Ruscha: And finally, it comes down to selecting things that sometimes lead you down strange roads, sometimes they’re non-sequiturs, sometimes they’re odd word combinations. But they have to have some sort of power or some strangeness to them for me to get on board.