Scratches, Spit and Vinegar
curated by Ed Ruscha
April 7 - June 4, 2016
Vito Acconci, Robert Barry, Robert Bechtle, Gunter Brus, Chris Burden, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Robert Hudson, Joan Jonas, Barry Le Va, Tom Marioni, Julie Mehretu, Rammellzee, Tim Rollins + K.O.S., Steve Reich, Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley
Make yourself small and imagine the beauty of skating across a copper plate, maybe with rusty skates, and seeing incisions that result from this action. You’ll see there is a certain fragrance to a line cut with a tool. Some lines will be staccato flecks, all waiting to be filled with ink. Scrawling, scratching, drawing, dripping upon, and otherwise talking to a plate of metal illustrates the true nature of this medium.
So it’s a kind of 3-part harmony: the artist, a metal plate and a device to make marks. All of these artists have clearly fallen for the seductive elements of this art form.
-Ed Ruscha