I went to the Ed Ruscha exhibition at the Hayward gallery two weeks ago. Usually I do readings and chats after such retrospective and intense exhibitions, but it did not happen this time. I got the chance to rethink the exhibition only now.

The balance that Ed Ruscha sets between graphic design and art is remarkable as an intensely discussed issue re-emerging nowadays. Ruscha’s output is quite interesting with typographical installations, colour patterns and symbol-image-message style, which has now become a convention, and used these visualisations of ‘consumption’ declarations to reflect his subjective issues. As someone trained in graphic design and visual arts, Ruscha hasn’t found it difficult to formulate his works and stroke a nice balance between design conventions and arts.

My favourites from the exhibition were ‘The mountain’ series trying to represent the notion/image of the mountain using uneven canvases and the diptychs depicting the changes an industrial complex has undergone over the years. Generally, I enjoyed the works of Ruscha who I perceived to have grown weary of the capitalist propaganda that
post-60s America subjected its public and focused on the concept of ‘degeneration’. It is intriguing and inspiring for an artist to reflect himself in such a concentrated and clear way through experimentations running from shape of the canvas to various semantic games, typography to different painting techniques.

As for the rest of the exhibition, I had a difficult time navigating Hayward Gallery, perhaps one of the most irregular spaces in London; it may be because it has been a while since I went to an exhibition on my own and I forgot to take care of myself in an art environment. However, someone ever coins a term like ‘curatorial labyrinth’ one day; this will be the exhibition to come to my mind.