![\"Roe](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Roe_Ethridge_0014-1.jpg\")
Roe Ethridge. Portrait by Claudia Klein.<\/p>\n Roe Ethridge. Portrait by Claudia Klein.<\/p>\n
Roe Ethridge has been described as a \u201cdilettante of low culture and high fashion\u201d \u2013 but don\u2019t hold it against him. His is an oeuvre which embodies a very current mix of seemingly disparate subjects \u2013 his arrays of wheel caps, fish carcasses, Chanel jewellery, neon footballs, flower bouquets and supermodels are part image bank, part concentration game. And no one familiar with the contemporary visual smoothie blending the New York Times, Vice and Self Service can\u2019t help but find something in there to connect with. His latest body of work, the bluntly-titled \u201cSacrifice Your Body\u201d which was on view at Berlin\u2019s Capitain Petzel and Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York simultaneously last winter, had all of the above plus more: Eighties phone receivers, instant noodles, Bonne Maman jars, street lights, shots of a pick-up truck being pulled out of a canal, and also Gisele Bundchen, the supermodel of supermodels. Where does all of this come from? Ethridge, fighting jet-lag with Marlboro Lights when we met, cites the fugue state as an approach to his work: fugue being a psychiatric disorder usually involving unplanned travel followed by amnesia. \u201cI relate to this in my work as a way to discover new images without an overwrought thesis or a predetermined subject matter,\u201d he says. \u201cYou go and take these pictures and return to consciousness in the studio and look through what you brought back.\u201d Fittingly, his, pictures do appear like clippings taken from today\u2019s excessive overflow of images. Yet he manages to create something in his exhibitions and accompanying books one can\u2019t find on Instagram: a harmony achieved through the combination of colour and composition, style and subject matter that has, well, a ring to it.
\nCue Johann Sebastian Bach: much like the composer in his fugue compositions, Ethridge aims at creating something new by taking images out of context, by recombining and sequencing them differently. \u201cI also love the idea of the fugue as a musical composition, as\u00a0a synthesis. Taking all these different kinds of music and bringing it into these short compositional pieces. So it is less about creating a new style and more about understanding and bringing together these disparate things and creating a kind of antagonism among things. And also harmony among things. And that, for me, in the gallery when I am hanging my pictures, is a way for me to make a sound with a photo exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Roe](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/COVER.jpg\")
Roe Ethridge, “Untitled (Alexis Bittar)”, 2013. C-print, 140 x 105.8 cm (framed), Ed. of 5, 2 AP, \u00a9 the artist, Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York & Capitain Petzel, Berlin.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn important part of the process for me is having two personalities,\u201d Ethridge says. One is sort of the fugue state shooter who is intuitively doing something, and then there is the editor who is the selector, sequencer, finisher. That is the hard part: having both voices sort of work for you. Sometimes I depend on other people to advise. But one of my favourite parts is that sequencing, putting one thing after another in order to create something new.\u201d
\nIf Roe Ethridge\u2019s art is that of synthesising, his personal image bank is also fed by the commercial projects he takes on \u2013 campaigns for Balenciaga and Kenzo, and work for Goldman Sachs and numerous editorial commissions. \u201cI very much wanted to be a conceptual artist but I was interested in commercial photography too,\u201d he says. An interest that was also driven by necessity: after his degree in art photography from the Florida State University and moving to New York, the Atlanta-native found himself having to make $4,000 a month just to survive in his new hometown. So he applied himself to any opportunity that would come up while learning on the job: \u201cI really had no idea how to be a commercial photographer and I failed a lot of times. It\u2019s incredible to me that I still get jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Roe](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/B-RETHRIDGE-.14-0008.jpg\")
Roe Ethridge, “Football and Lavender\u201c, 2013, C-print, 88 x 130 cm (framed), Ed. of 5, 2 AP, \u00a9 the artist, Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York & Capitain Petzel, Berlin.<\/p>\n
But he did, and the clients kept getting bigger. And while he still finds it \u201cnervewracking\u201d to not know whether he will be able to find his tone when working for a client, he enjoys the freedoms promised by editorial work. A freedom, that is, which was paradoxically gained by the downsizing of magazine budgets during recent years. Whereas a magazine would be able to pay its photographers decent rates and also fund the production in the heydays of the Eighties and Nineties, photographers nowadays pay a lot out of their own pockets. With that comes control over the content: \u201cI spend my own money. And because of that, there isn\u2019t someone looking over my shoulder and I get a lot more control over what the result is. So when I do something for a magazine in the studio, I like to call it my rental atelier.\u201d Is it so simple \u2013 are Ethridge’s art shows just some kind of best-of-the-rest? Not quite: \u201cI\u2019m not necessarily thinking, \u2018Uh, I\u2019m gonna get a bunch of good pictures for my art show\u201d\u2019 I\u2019m not even actually sure if I will or I won\u2019t. It\u2019s a case by case situation.\u201d
\nThe clashing of worlds, the antagonism of high and low, is an Ethridge speciality. Having transplanted from the south to New York, his work is full of suburban tropes that clash with the highly-stylised surfaces of his fashion themed work. The current show\u2019s title, \u201cSacrifice Your Body\u201d, marks a highlight: it\u2019s what football moms would yell at their sons when he was playing football in high school. \u201cMy mom denies having ever used that,\u201d Etheridge says. \u201cBut it\u2019s like I can still hear their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Roe](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/B-RETHRIDGE-.14-0020.jpg\")
Roe Ethridge, “Bonne Maman Jar is\u201c, 2013, C-print,\u00a088.1 x 119 cm (framed), Ed. of 5, 2\u00a0AP, \u00a9 the artist, Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York & Capitain Petzel, Berlin.<\/p>\n
How has that worked for him, his upbringings in the laid-back South and the sometimes exhausting social life in the New York art scene? Does Larry Gagosian, his art dealer, take him for regular lunch dates? \u201cI haven\u2019t had lunch with Larry yet. But my best friends are art dealers and I definitely consider myself part of the art world. But once you reach a certain age it seems kind of sad to show up at every opening.\u201d Having two kids, whom he takes care of with his wife Nancy, he works from nine to five; he \u201ccan\u2019t wake up at noon and dig around at my studio for six hours and then go to an opening. I have to get up at 6.30am and get breakfast for the kids.\u201d He still draws from his days when he was younger, he adds, when it was necessary for him to establish a social thing. \u201cBut honestly I think that it might be easier for me still in the art world if I was more social. There\u2019s only so much time though. And I think most people agree that the social aspects of New York are pretty exhausting. You have to be a very good editor of your time.\u201d Roe Ethridge. Portrait by Claudia Klein. Roe Ethridge has been described as a \u201cdilettante of low culture and high fashion\u201d \u2013 but don\u2019t hold it against him. His is an oeuvre which embodies a very current mix of seemingly disparate subjects \u2013 his arrays of wheel caps, fish carcasses, Chanel jewellery, neon footballs, flower bouquets…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[1941,80,21,1942,1281,13,1943,154,1944,1887,344],"class_list":["post-17876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-capitan-petzel","tag-exclusive","tag-fashion","tag-gagosian","tag-hans-bussert","tag-interview","tag-larry-gagosian","tag-photography","tag-roe-ethridge","tag-sleek-mag-41","tag-sleek-magazine"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nSo it might help that Klaus Biesenbach is now a neighbour on Rockaway Beach, even though the ubiquitous director of the MoMA PS1 doesn\u2019t surf: \u201cNo, no high fives on the beach with Klaus yet either,\u201d Ethridge laughs.
\nOriginal text by Hans Bussert<\/a><\/strong> \nEntnommen aus\u00a0<\/a>Sleek Magazine 41: What & Why<\/a><\/strong> \nMore interviews: an exclusive visit with David Ostrowski,\u00a0the art world’s it-boy<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"