About
Exhibition of one hundred unique works by Ed Ruscha to benefit the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS and AIDS Project Los Angeles
Gagosian is pleased to present a benefit exhibition of new work by Ed Ruscha. Proceeds from the exhibition will benefit two Los Angeles AIDS organizations:
The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS is the first national organization to assist artists with HIV and AIDS in presenting, continuing, and preserving their work. Through cost-effective services such as free art materials and estate planning, the Estate Project focuses on the needs of one of the communities most devastated by AIDS—the arts community. The Estate Project began work in Los Angeles last year and also provides assistance to artists in New York, Miami, and Chicago. The Estate Project works with existing AIDS and arts service organizations to enhance their programs and to provide funding for special efforts focused on artists with HIV and AIDS.
AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) is well known as the leading AIDS service provider in Los Angeles. APLA provides a range of services including case management, entitlements, housing, a food bank, dental care, and health care.
Patrick Moore, director of the Estate Project, explains, “We are delighted to be working with the AIDS Project Los Angeles to jointly raise funds to assist people with AIDS. Because the Estate Project receives referrals from APLA, it makes a great deal of sense to work together in this way as well. To have Ed Ruscha, one of the most important living American artists, working with us to assist his colleagues in the arts community who are living with AIDS is an incredible opportunity.”
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Artist Spotlight
Ed Ruscha
September 16–22, 2020
At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist . . . who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Ruscha’s formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular have evolved in form and meaning as technology alters the essence of human communication.
Photo: Kate Simon
galleryplatform.la
Ed Ruscha
Drum Skins
May 28–June 30, 2020
Gagosian is pleased to present recent paintings by Ed Ruscha online for galleryplatform.la. Fifty years ago, Ruscha purchased a set of vellum drum skins from a leather shop in Los Angeles. He has continued to collect these vintage objects, and since 2011 he has used them as canvases for the works on view in his solo exhibition Drum Skins at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
Installation view, Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, January 11–October 4, 2020. Artwork © Ed Ruscha