by Garrison Frost

Downtown Los Angeles, on the Thursday between Christmas and New Years, was an unusual pleasure, a downright nice place to be. Traffic was light, and the work around the office was particularly without stress. An added bonus: the Museum of Contemporary Art's latest habit of free admission all day on Thursdays. So, I popped out of the building, caught the F Dash to the B Dash and, Voila, found myself strolling into one of my favorite galleries.

Of course, I wasn't just there for the architecture. I'd heard good things about the Ruscha exhibit going on called "Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Rusca." A career retrospective of the artist's work on paper, the show just edged out a lamb sandwich at Philippe's for my noontime attention. I was not disappointed.

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Ruscha is limited. In fact, any biographical information I toss into this piece you're reading will be coming straight out of the free flyer they give you at the MOCA information desk. But of course, I am familiar with the guy's work. I've seen the burning LACMA, flipped through the book of gas stations, smiled at his Hollywood sign. I've longed recognized Ruscha as one of the few Los Angeles-based giants of the art world, even though I'm not really sure how to pronounce his name.

The show at MOCA – which includes notes and drafts of more famous works in other media – is a great place to start with Ruscha because it is nothing less than a record of his artistic mind as it developed since in the mid-1950s.

One of Ruscha's most recognizable subjects is words – words as images – but I don't think I really understood the extent of the artist's interest until I walked into MOCA last Thursday. As someone who has spent no small amount of time obsessing over lettering and typefaces, I really came away with the impression that in these early works, Ruscha is dealing less with the meaning of the words than their physical structure. He is playing with typography, sure, but taking it into newer territory as well, beyond the page, so to speak. Although he is working on paper, he doesn't want the type to be stuck there. And so we have works like "Hey with Curled Edge," which depicts the very paper we're supposed to be reading curling up over heavy block letters. Other times, he's just enjoying the whimsy of the lettering, as with his cursive "Pussy," "Lisp" and "Stardust." Still, with works like "Motor," which shows the letters has this vertical walls, Ruscha seems to want to see the letters escape the very surface on which he's creating them.

"Chocolate Room" is a kick. This work – comprising 360 panels screen printed with chocolate paste for the 35th Venice Biennial – is one of the few works on paper that will greet you more as a smell than something interesting to look at. When you walk into the room, the smell of the chocolate hits your nose and you feel like you're in a candy shop. You almost can't believe that the smell is coming from the walls themselves.

Ruscha creates amazing depth on paper. In the more recent work contained in the show, the images seem distant, blurred by time, light, weather and technology. One sees this in "Bison Study" and "Homeward Bound" and their hazy silhouettes of a buffalo and a sailing ship. And it's very much on display in his set of countdown movie frames, "Two" and "Five," as well as his various versions of "The End."

Of course, there's a lot more to Ruscha and his work than what one sees in the MOCA show. But everything here is of a kind with his other stuff. It all twists and turns and plays on the culture and images of Southern California. Even when it's not obvious, the work feels at home in downtown Los Angeles at MOCA.

The runs through Jan. 17 at MOCA. On Thursdays, it's free.

(Jan. 2, 2004)

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