Author Description

Gagosian is pleased to present Custom-Built Intrigue: Drawings 1974-1984, an exhibition of key text drawings by Ed Ruscha. Many of these historical gems have been brought together thanks to generous loans from private and institutional collections. Throughout decades of formal experimentation, Ruscha has explored the role of language in painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and bookmaking through a singular, sometimes oblique use of words. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, he honed his distinctive drawing practice to create some of the most compelling works of his career. The text drawings from this period, exquisitely rendered in pastel, dry pigment, and various edible substances, from spinach to carrot juice, bridge the spirited Pop art for which Ruscha first gained renown with the cerebral Conceptualism to which his work was essential.--Gallery website.