Ed Ruscha: Metro Mattresses

Ed Ruscha (born 1937) has been casting his eye across the landscapes of the American West for over 50 years, taking in everything from gas stations to swimming pools to sublime mountain ranges. With their clarity and deadpan wit, his photographs, drawings and paintings impart a mood of playful awe on everyday monuments. The motifs for his new series Metro Mattresses were found, like so many of the subjects of his work, on the streets of Los Angeles. In each of the 12 works in the series we encounter a mattress, or mattresses, isolated and in various states of neglect, all depicted against a neutral backdrop. The serial nature of the Metro Mattresses works brings to mind some of Ruscha’s earliest work, such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) or Every Building on Sunset Strip (1966). This handsome volume collects the series, with the images beautifully reproduced on board pages.