NEW YORK, NY.- Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York, is presenting an extensive survey of Ed Ruscha’s “Ribbon Word” drawings in the gallery. Curated by Dieter Buchhart, the all-loan show features significant works from museum and private collections, as well as from the artist himself.

Nearly forty of the gunpowder drawings were included in Ruscha’s first solo show in New York in December of 1967, held at the legendary Alexandre Iolas Gallery . Ed Ruscha: Ribbon Words will feature over fifty iconic examples of these works by the artist including a number from the original exhibition. According to Nahem, “Ruscha creates the urbanscape of irony and incongruity that we as denizens stretch to make peace with. He seizes a concept and concisely excises all but what the viewer absolutely needs to visualize. It’s then up to the individual to run with it within his or her own imagination.”

Ruscha’s earliest ribbon drawings date to 1967 and were made using graphite. However, the artist soon began using gunpowder initially due to a lack of graphite, but he continued using it exclusively because of the more versatile properties of the medium. The perceived three-dimensional character of the drawings was made possible by building numerous layers with gunpowder. In the ensuing years, the artist incorporated pastel pink, peach, yellow, and lime in some drawings in addition to re-working and re-using words, phrases and thematics. According to Buchhart, “Ruscha’s rigorous practice makes it possible for the viewer to visually re-contextualize words and their meanings, alongside the artist’s own shifting impressions of them.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937, Ed Ruscha is considered among the most influential contemporary painters and printmakers working today. His list of solo exhibitions and retrospectives spans the globe and includes shows at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Haus der Kunst, Munich, among others. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

Dieter Buchhart has organized major exhibitions by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georges Braque, Otto Dix, Keith Haring, and Edvard Munch at institutions such as the Guggenheim Bilbao, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Brooklyn Museum, the Fondation Beyeler, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.