Davies, Lucy, Roe Ethridge: Commercial Break, The ... - Greengrassi

Amoreen Armetta: Roe Ethridge. Frieze, London, Sept 23, 2008.
Roe Ethridge
09.04.08-­‐10.04.08 Andrew Kreps Gallery
In Roe Ethridge’s photograph Oysters, 2008, six gleaming bivalves are arranged
on a crisp bed of sea salt that has been poured onto a sturdy white plate resting
on a rustic wooden table. The composition is bathed in sunlight. Initially
seductive, on second glance one discovers this is not a great photograph: The
shadows are a bit harsh, the angle is awkward, and the framing is skewed. In no
time at all, the viewer no longer really desires these oysters. Similarly, in Myla
with Column, 2008, what at first glance seems to be a classical nude turns out to
be just odd. Not Vice-­‐magazine odd, but still too knowing to be earnest and too
well crafted to be amateur. The shadows are harsh again, the neo-­‐geo ’80s
backdrop—complete with Roman column—comes off as neither ironic nor
funny, and the lighting and color palette are reminiscent of ’40s pinups. This is
an aesthetic pioneered by Paul Outerbridge, one of Ethridge’s primary
influences, who presciently opted for color photography in the ’30s and fused (as
Ethridge does) a commercial and fine-­‐art aesthetic until his increasingly
fetishistic nudes got him into trouble. Ethridge dials up Outerbridge’s stylistic
oddities; in this exhibition, single images are more complex than those in his
previous series, and they rely less on adjacent works for meaning. Each
photograph leads viewers through a gamut of reactions. Because seduction isn’t
his only aim, Ethridge’s images, which are not so many things they are frequently
made out to be (Lynchian, or banal, or mere documentation of an artist’s
decadent lifestyle), seduce.