Roe Ethridge

Gagosian is pleased to announce Rude in the Good Way, an exhibition of photographs by Roe Ethridge, opening at the Athens gallery on January 22, 2026.

The exhibition represents a return to the Greek capital for the artist, who in a previous project there found parallels between the hybrid character of his work and the blended symbolism of the Erechtheion, a temple dedicated to Athena on the Acropolis. Exploring a space between commercial, editorial, and studio photography, Ethridge encourages the collision and comingling of form and genre. In Rude in the Good Way, he establishes visual and conceptual links between images, both through their juxtaposition in the gallery, and by their inclusion in a book of the same title published to coincide with the exhibition.

Rude in the Good Way represents a confluence of fashion shoots, portraits, still-life arrangements, and interior scenes, embodying disparate modes. Chanel No 5 from 1924 on Tray of Pearls and Mirror Checkerboard (2025) originated with an invitation to mine Chanel’s archive, from which Ethridge selected a vintage perfume bottle that evoked childhood memories of his mother. The ubiquitous brand reappears in Double Red Chanel (2025), which builds on the artist’s recent cover shoot of Lila Moss for the November 25 issue of Vogue Japan. By layering two differently sized versions of the same image atop one another, he sets the model’s doubled figure against a doubled sunset, establishing a formal echo that reverberates throughout the installation.