ROE ETHRIDGE – AMERICAN SPIRIT
2017-04-03In Ethridge’s photograph Untitled (American Spirit), 2017, a foreground of blurred roses gives way to a familiar scene of warm light emanating into the night from a window. As it comes into focus, tranquility is soon disrupted by Chinese characters, the after-effect of a computer batch edit, and the house is a backdrop, photographed in between takes on a fashion shoot. This acknowledgment of artifice is central to Ethridge’s practice, which takes equally from his work as a commercial photographer, and artist. Employing photographic tropes that span from still lives to portraiture, Ethridge blurs the lines between the two, creating images that are simultaneously generic and intimate, often treading between humor and cynicism. Functioning in tandem, these motivations coalesce into an ongoing investigation into the mechanics of photographs, and their ability to both retreat into the personal, and expand to relay collective experiences.
In a new series of collaged works titled Pic n’ clips, which borrow their name from a drawer of coupons cut and collected by the artist’s mother, Ethridge pulls from computer desktop archives of the same name built over the past 12 years. Contrasting this slow accumulation, blank swaths of photoshop canvas were populated in a task-like manner, generating nearly accidental networks of images. Printed in transparent layers, and further embellished with rich hues and flattened American Spirit packs, the works create new and unanticipated associations, as images follow the chronological sorting mechanism of the computer.
Opposite – Pic ‘n Clip 5, 2017
Exhibition runs through to April 8th, 2017
Andrew Kreps Gallery
537 West 22nd Street
New York
10011
