Ed Ruscha (b. 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska) turned his attention to the visual and linguistic tropes of advertising right from the start of his artistic career. He quickly came to see words not simply as carriers of information, but recognized their potential as independent visual forms. With laconic humour, a reduced palette and concise compositions, he developed a pictorial vocabulary in which letters are the main actors. The work Dam Fino is a potent example of this. The title – derived from a slang abbreviation of “damned if I know” – appears in a clear typography characteristic of Ruscha, floating freely in front of an atmospherically deliquescent colour background. Language and image are here inextricably intertwined: the word is not only read but also viewed as an object.
Ruscha plays with the ambivalence between meaning and visual presence. His word paintings elude clear interpretations, while at the same time translating familiar everyday expressions into a monumental dimension. In Dam Fino the banal is iconised and the boundary between text and image is blurred. Ruscha thus subverts our expectations of the Pop Art that he simultaneously cites – he takes up its undisguised directness, but from an ironic distance. The result is a work that not only conveys a message, but also reflects on the mechanisms of language and perception themselves.
Dry pigment and acrylic on paper
26.4 x 34.9 x 3.8 cm
Signed and dated Ed Ruscha 2024 lower right
Copyright: Ed Ruscha
Courtesy: Ed Ruscha and Gagosian
Provenance: donated by the artist and Gagosian
