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Ed Ruscha, He Up and Went Downtown, Porcelain Plate, 2020
Porcelain plate
From a limited edition of 175
10.5 × 10.5 in (26.7 × 26.7 cm)
NOTES: The only edition to date from Ruscha’s ‘Drum Skins’ series. Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins debuts a new body of more than a dozen round paintings made between 2017 and 2019 by the pioneering American artist known for his use of language. The presentation features text Ruscha painted on found drumheads that he has collected over the past forty years. Informed by memories of the distinctive slang he grew up hearing in Oklahoma, the phrases consist of double and triple negatives such as “I Ain’t Telling You No Lie” and “I Never Done Nobody No Harm.” As Ruscha explains, “I grew up with people that spoke this way.…I was very acutely aware of it and amused by it. It seems like you’d run from incorrect English, but I embraced it. I like seeing it and exposing it.
