Works Exhibited
About
Photography is like jujitsu. You’re taking whatever is coming at you, and doing something with it.
—Roe Ethridge
Gagosian is pleased to announce American Polychronic, an exhibition of new photographs by Roe Ethridge that shares its title with the recently published first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work from 1999 to 2022. Another exhibition of new work by the artist, also titled American Polychronic, is concurrently on view at Andrew Kreps Gallery from January 13 to February 18, 2023.
Moving within and between photographic genres, from art historically informed portraiture and still-life composition to the styled and coded world of the fashion shoot and the bottomless well of stock and online imagery, Ethridge juxtaposes staged scenes with chanced-upon vignettes, pursuing a formal language that trades in visual friction and the wry transgression of structural rules. His ever-expanding catalogue of hybrid images reflects the textures of contemporary American society, expanding on a formal sensibility peculiar to the “generic Methodist, Southern, middle-class world” in which he grew up.
“Polychronic essentially means to do more than one thing at a time,” Ethridge explains of the exhibition’s title. “It’s also a way to describe a cultural notion of time. In the moment, it feels like we are all polychronic by choice or by necessity.” Thus, the term connotes the influence of overlapping contexts on the unfolding of events across a multiverse of images. In Ethridge’s new monograph, images produced for exhibition over the course of twenty-four years are arranged from oldest to most recent, while commercial and editorial photographs appear in the opposite order. The much more focused selection of works on view in the exhibition makes use of the New York gallery space to highlight resonances between the images; in its restrained design, the installation forms an effective counterpoint to the densely packed feel of the book.
#RoeEthridge
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
In Conversation
Roe Ethridge and Antwaun Sargent
From his early work for magazines in the 1990s to recent projects with the designer Telfar Clemens, Roe Ethridge has consistently challenged the distinctions between commercial and conceptual photography that long defined the medium. Antwaun Sargent recently caught up with him to discuss the moment that confirmed the artist’s understanding of the photographic image’s potential for boundary-hopping ubiquity in the contemporary era.
Shortlist
Twelve Tracks: Roe Ethridge
Roe Ethridge shares the transportive powers of his playlist “Teenage Chemicals in 1985,” a soundtrack that began playing in those formative years and hasn’t stopped since.
Roe Ethridge
During a conversation with David Rimanelli, Roe Ethridge reflected on photographs that he made during the late 1990s and early 2000s after moving to New York. They spoke as Ethridge was preparing for his exhibition Old Fruit.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
Picasso and Maya: An Interview with Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso
Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso curated an exhibition at Gagosian, Paris, in 2017–18 titled Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter. To celebrate the exhibition, a publication was published in 2019; the comprehensive reference publication explores the figure of Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Pablo Picasso’s beloved eldest daughter, throughout Picasso’s work and chronicles the loving relationship between the artist and his daughter. In this video, Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso details her ongoing interest in the subject and reflects on the process of making the book.
News
Book Signing
Roe Ethridge
American Polychronic
Saturday, February 25, 2023, 4–5pm
Gagosian Shop, New York
To celebrate the publication of his new monograph, American Polychronic, Roe Ethridge will sign copies of the book in front of his exhibition of the same name at Gagosian, New York. The comprehensive volume documents Ethridge’s work from 1999 to 2022, focusing on two interlocking threads of his celebrated photographic practice. The photographs move fluidly between genres in pursuit of a distinctive visual language—blending and playfully juxtaposing the realms of fine art, fashion imagery, and advertising with the everyday, personal, and generic. The book includes a new essay by Jamieson Webster and a conversation between the artist and Antwaun Sargent. Published by MACK, it will be available for purchase at the event, which is free to attend.
Roe Ethridge: American Polychronic (New York: MACK, 2023)
