Ed Ruscha Events & Exhibitions: Current & Upcoming Shows
Sweets, Meats, Sheets © Ed Ruscha 1975
Ed Ruscha
240 works
Key Takeaways
Ed Ruscha’s art stands out for its cool minimalism and wry perspective on American life, blending words, images, and architectural elements that capture the vernacular of the American West. His work often centres on familiar urban landscapes, roadside icons, and subtle cultural commentary, with a focus on Los Angeles and its unique visual language. This iconic approach places him among the pioneering voices of Pop Art and conceptual art.
Ed Ruscha is known for his distinctive approach that merges text, bold colour, and imagery to explore themes of American culture and consumerism. His work often draws on the landscapes and architecture of the American West, transforming everyday icons into complex social commentary. From the geometric structures of Los Angeles apartments to the ubiquitous gas stations along American highways, Ruscha’s pieces celebrate the simplicity of American advertisements while critiquing their commercial undercurrents. His 1963 artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, stands as a seminal work, highlighting his fascination with reproducible architecture and capturing the essence of mid-20th century Americana through a Pop Art lens.
Discovering Ed Ruscha: A Guide to Current & Upcoming Shows
Upcoming exhibitions invite both long-time followers and new audiences to experience Ruscha’s unique artistic journey through the lens of American Pop Art. Through these exhibitions, viewers can delve into Ruscha’s evolving approach to colour, architecture, and typography, experiencing the work of an artist who captured the American spirit with both irony and affection.
Ed Ruscha: Paper
Location: Joslyn Art Museum, Nebraska, USA
Dates: September, 2024 - September 23, 2025
Description: Ed Ruscha: Paper offers an in-depth look at the artist’s unique take on everyday American culture, drawing on familiar images like gas stations, commercial logos, and popular consumer products. Known for his fascination with everyday language, Ruscha frequently incorporates playful elements such as rhymes, puns, and catchphrases to give voice to American vernacular in his work. The exhibition showcases pieces from his recent gift to the Museum, spanning six decades of his career. Featuring an array of drawings, prints, and photographs, the exhibition reveals his experimental use of materials, from ink and acrylic to gunpowder, on paper, highlighting his integration of text and image in exploring the American landscape.
Sculpting with Light: Contemporary Artists and Holography
Location: The Getty, California, USA
Dates: August, 2024 - November 24, 2024
Description: Sculpting with Light delves into the mesmerising world of holography, an art form that creates the illusion of 3D objects floating in space; a feat made possible by laser technology in the 1960s. Highlighting works from artists including Ruscha, John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, and Deana Lawson, the show explores how each artist used holography to push the boundaries of their respective practices. Many of these holograms emerged from the 1990s C Project, which invited artists to experiment with this captivating medium, while more recent works by Lawson showcase her expanded approach to photography.
Ed Ruscha: Works on Paper
Location: Hall Art Foundation, Vermont, USA
Dates: May, 2024 - December 01, 2024
Description: Ed Ruscha: Works on Paper showcases Ruscha’s influential exploration of language and American culture. The exhibition opens with a selection of Ruscha’s early black-and-white photographs from 1962, including images from his iconic artist book Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963). In these images, Ruscha captures gas stations along Route 66 with a stark, frontal perspective, highlighting the architecture of everyday American life. The exhibition also features over a dozen works on paper spanning five decades, illustrating Ruscha’s innovative use of language as a central theme. From his reverse-stencilling technique in the 1970s, where he used materials like Pepto-Bismol and gunpowder to shape letters, to his dimensional ‘ribbon words’ drawings, Ruscha explores the visual impact of letters and phrases. His works play with words as both image and meaning, blurring the line between text and visual art in a distinctly American context.
Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge
Location: American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy
Dates: September, 2024 - December 07, 2024
Description: Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge examines the creative possibilities of the artist’s book and its role in art, design, and publishing. Inspired by books Ruscha donated to the AAR Library in 2001, the exhibition includes over a hundred works from the Academy’s library and Italian private collections, spanning from 1905 to today. It explores the ways artists have experimented with book forms, shifting between traditional structures and inventive new formats like pamphlets, letterpresses, and 3D constructions.
L.A. Story
Location: Hauser & Wirth, California, USA
Dates: September, 2024 - January 04, 2025
Description: Inspired by the whimsical and romantic 1991 film L.A. Story, Hauser & Wirth presents an exhibition that captures the surreal charm of Los Angeles through works by a wide-ranging group of artists. Co-curated by Ingrid Schaffner and Mike Davis, and developed with insights from L.A. Story’s writer and star, Steve Martin, the exhibition reflects the film’s playful celebration of the city’s freeways, sunsets, and cultural eccentricities. Much like the film, the exhibit unfolds as a visual love letter to the city. Opening with paintings of backyard pools by Rushca, David Hockney and others, the show delves into LA’s vibrant world through works like Ruscha’s iconic depictions of LA landmarks. Featuring established and emerging artists, the exhibition combines scenes of LA’s everyday sprawl with hints of the surreal, tracing the city’s evolution as a contemporary art capital since the film’s release.
(Un)Settled: The Landscape In American Art
Location: Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama, USA
Dates: October, 2024 - February 02, 2025
Description: Un(Settled) examines the evolving role of the American landscape as a muse and symbol in art from the colonial era to today. Featuring over 40 artworks across diverse media, the exhibition brings together celebrated names like Ruscha, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Marsden Hartley, alongside furniture, ceramics, and other material culture that reveal the layers of meaning in American landscapes. Un(Settled) explores how artists depict landscapes not only as natural wonders but also as reflections on national identity, land preservation, and cultural complexity. Together, these pieces illustrate how American surroundings shape our identity and sense of place, reflecting changing views over the past two centuries.
FRAMED: American Urban Photography 1907 - 2012
Location: Lillehammer Art Museum, Lillehammer, Norway
Dates: October, 2024 - April 20, 2025
Description: FRAMED offers a compelling look at the dynamic life within America’s cities, spanning New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco from 1910 to 1980. Through the lenses of groundbreaking photographers like Ruscha, Diane Arbus, and Dorothea Lange, the exhibition captures the city’s energy and its impact on everyday lives. Images of people on the streets, from workers to wanderers, reveal intimate moments of joy, struggle, and resilience, highlighting the fine line between public and private life in urban settings. This exhibition brings together iconic urban imagery that reflects not only the architecture of the metropolis, but also the psychological and social interactions that animate it.
Ed Ruscha
240 works
