Lot 17 email save

ED RUSCHA, Atlas, 1983

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Atlas, 1983
Dry pigment on paper. 22 1/2 x 30 in. (56.8 x 76 cm). Signed and dated "Ed Ruscha 1983" lower right.

PROVENANCE Don Francis, California; James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles; Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; Spark Gallery, Tokyo; Galerie Vedovi, Brussels; Edward Tyler Nahem, New York; Sprüth Magers Lee, London; Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, Munich
EXHIBITED New York, Edward Tyler Nahem, Ed Ruscha: Selected Works, May 6 - June 30, 2005
This work will be included in a forthcoming volume of Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper.     Ed Ruscha has established his formidable career on playful adventures in language. His work bridges graphic design, fine art and lingual experimentation with the sensibility of American folklore recreated through painting and photography. A resident of Los Angeles since 1956, Ruscha's investigations into the Californian metropolis are also present in his work: text redefines mountains and pools, and assigns an identity to anonymous icons of the American landscape. Similarly, the present lot presents an image of an interior space marked by the slanted shadow of a setting sun, ironically labeled with a word that invokes travel, movement, and open outdoor spaces. To Ruscha, words intrinsically carry personal interpretations as an extension of the viewer's individual experience. "When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were guttural utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase; I just happened to paint words like someone else painted flowers. It wasn't until later that I was interested in combinations of words and making thoughts, sentences, and things like that," (E. Ruscha, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, Cambridge, 2002, p. 264).

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