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Summary
Fotomontagen
zu den kub Billboards,
Seestraße,
Bregenz:
The work of Ed Ruscha (born 1937), one of the best-known artist
of his generation, eludes established categories. Assigned to pop
art at the start of his career and later on to conceptual art, today
it is clear that one of the qualities of Ed Ruscha’s work is its never
confining itself to one style or medium.
For all its variety of styles and techniques, however,
Ed Ruscha’s work also displays certain constants. Among these
is his use of writing, whether in print form or painted onto pictures
on canvas. It is a red thread that runs through his oeuvre from its
earliest beginnings to the present. As far back as the early 1960s
he produced his legendary artist books.
With these works alone Ed Ruscha went down in art history
and influenced later generations. His works are represented in the
most important museums worldwide, and two years ago a major
retrospective of his painting toured the museums of North America
and Europe.
While that retrospective was devoted exclusively to his
paint ing, the Kunsthaus Bregenz will be presenting not one but an
entire range of media including drawing, photogravure, book,
film, and acrylic and oil painting. The focus will be on an obviousenough
area which, nevertheless, has never been fully examined
to date, namely, the significance of the book and/or the act of
»reading« in his work.
Just how productive Ed Ruscha’s engagement with the
written word is can be seen from his artist books, all of which are
on show in the Bregenz exhibition, as also from the abstract oil and
acrylic pictures of the Cityscapes series. Over a dozen such works
in the exhibition document not only the atmos pheric density that
this combination of visual abstraction and the words supplied
in thought can generate, but also a remark able directness varying
from despair and aggression to humor.
There are also new, large-format pictures, likewise produced
exclusively for the exhibition, that are being presented to the
public for the first time.
The exhibition Reading Ed Ruscha was specially conceived
by the artist for the Kunsthaus Bregenz. It will be, surprisingly,
his first institutional solo exhibition in Austria.
kub 2012.03 Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha
Naive Evian
Open Book, 2003,
Acryl auf ungrun -
diertem Leinen,
50,8 x 60,9 cm
Foto: Paul Ruscha
© Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha
Index, 2002,
Acryl und Tusche
auf ungrundiertem
Leinen,
61 x 50,8 cm
Foto: Paul Ruscha
© Ed Ruscha