Ruscha Package:
In 1977 Ed Ruscha made a drawing that consisted solely of the text: Will 100 Artists Draw A 1950 Ford From Memory. In the summer of 2006, The Gagosian gallery advertised a show in Art Forum, using this drawing. A week after I saw that ad, I contacted Gagosion in New York City, and asked permission to use the drawing for a show. I wanted to actualize the drawing, work on finding 100 artists to draw that Ford. Ed Ruscha gave me permission; I started to find my artists.

I want to figure out what each of those words mean, can memory be about what you saw in a movie, or stories of your parents first car, or whatever the cultural platonic ideal of this machine is? (Is it even a car? I have seen plenty of trucks)

I also want to extend the identity of the category “artist”. Here I include graffiti workers, comics creators, illustrators of all kinds, in addition to those in the gallery system.

Lastly, I am asking what drawing means. Drawing has become popular, because the defining characteristics have become more ambiguous, mostly because it never maintained the historical supremacy of painting of sculpture. So even the most ardent minimalists, the people who considered painting dead, drew. In this way, Ruscha, with his conceptual/linguistic heritage, makes an all American koan.

The show is a challenge to Ruscha as well, he asked for 100 artists to be asked, he did not require the work itself. By completing the task to a degree farther then expected I want to return to the importance of mark making, to out-conceptualize the conceptualists.

Note on Installation:

I want a room as close to the white cube as possible. On two facing walls, I want one of them to have the 100 drawings pinned to the wall, unframed and unmated. On the opposite wall, facing the 100 drawings, I want Ruscha’s work to be framed, matted, and centered. I want the installation to be passive aggressive, an aesthetic facing off.