Ed Ruscha: Mixmaster

The Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli continues its research project on collecting and introduces Ed Ruscha: Mixmaster, an ideal collection made up of objects selected from Turin public collections and placed alongside the artist’s work.

The exhibition, curated by Paolo Colombo, offers a selection of artefacts associated to the areas of interest in Ruscha’s oeuvre, in close connection with his artistic research. Each element coming from Turin collections serves as a historical counterpart to the artist’s oeuvre and in turn Ed Ruscha’s works become a touchstone and a contemporary metaphor of the chosen objects.

The study on collecting brings to Turin a very unusual exhibition which conveys in the rooms of the Pinacoteca Agnelli the course of research and reflection experienced by the artist himself. Indeed, the exhibition showcases what in Turin collections has mostly interested and inspired Ed Ruscha, together with a series of works mainly coming from his personal collection. Alongside drawings, photographs and often unknown paintings, kept as a testimony of his work, one may find objects at times never displayed in Turin museums, the fruit of the artist’s search in local collections.

The exhibition is divided in different chapters, each corresponding to a room or a dedicated space, where Ed Ruscha’s works take on a function similar to the music key in a score: introducing the position of notes and the pitch of sounds. Therefore the artist’s works establish a relationship with the objects he singled out himself in Turin museums, emphasising the aesthetic affinities and kinship in content with his oeuvre.