Ed Ruscha
‚Books & Co.‘

Los Angeles

After New York, Munich and Paris, the exhibition Books & Co. by Ed Ruscha is now on view at Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles. Books & Co. honors a medium that the American artist revolutionized – the ‚livre d’artiste‘. This exhibition is presented conjunctly with the show Ed Ruscha Prints and Photographs. Through lithographs and pictures, the show underlines Ruscha’s fascination for typography and quotidian architecture.

In the 1960s the ‚livre d’artiste‘ was a luxurious highly crafted medium only available for a few. Ed Ruscha changed the game by self producing slim booklets allowing the possibilities of mass-production and distribution. In Books & Co. the famous books Every Building on the Sunset Strip and Real Estate Opportunities can be browsed and discovered. While on the other exhibition room of the Gagosian Los Angeles space, the prints and photographs presented in the books are on view through Ed Ruscha Prints and Photographs. The famous photographic series Standard Station, Mocha Standard, Cheese Sold Standard with Olive and Double Standard with its Renaissance perspective and depiction of the Hollywood sign is on view along with prints portfolio News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues. The eloquent typographic works of Ruscha Wall Rocket, Jet Baby and Sponge Puddle and their typical mountainous background are as well representative of the artist’s corpus.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are currently presenting Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, a major solo exhibition spanning the artist’s career through more than eighty works.

Ed Ruscha, Artists Who Do Books, 1976, Print, 22 3/4 × 28 3/4 inches (57.8 × 73 cm) © Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Mocha Standard, Cheese Mold Standard with Olive, and Double Standard, 1966–69, Four screenprints on wove paper, 25 3/4 × 40 inches each (65.4 × 101.6 cm) © Ed Ruscha

Gagosian Gallery

July 28 – September 9, 2016

456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
USA

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