Ed Ruscha: New Wood, Old Wood

The relief prints in this diptych by Ed Ruscha derive from a weatherworn piece of wood that the artist found in the desert near Joshua Tree National Park. Using a proprietary process for printing high-relief works they first developed in the 1970s, the Los Angeles–based workshop Mixografia made soft impressions of the wood which Ruscha then manipulated, prying apart the crack in the “old” plank and sealing it in the “new” one. The images are printed on handmade paper, which was tinted to achieve a trompe l’oeil effect. The prints embody Ruscha’s long-standing interest in deterioration over time, as well as his penchant for detecting recognizable imagery in abstract forms. About the “old” plank, he observes: “The knot in the wood ended up looking like an eye, and the whole thing started looking like some kind of nasty crocodile or serpent.”