See Pictures Of Roe Ethridge’s High-Low Americana

American photographer Roe Ethridge’s current exhibition at Gagosian New York American Polychronic looks what it “means to do more than one thing at a time,” the artist says of the exhibition’s title —“It’s also a way to describe a cultural notion of time. In the moment, it feels like we are all polychronic by choice or by necessity.” The show has launched with an accompanying monograph from Mack Books American Polychronic, and is the first retrospective of the artist’s work spanning the last 25 years. The show offers a rare opportunity to see the insurgent photographer’s spotlight of high and low American culture, from glossy magazine editorials to ageing 1980s refrigerators.

Etheridge established himself in the early 1990s by mixing commercial and subcultural aesthetics into a body of work that subverts both genres. American Polychronic minutely traces that journey, from 2001’s Pigeon to Dallas Thanksgiving of 2020. The fact that Etheridge spent his youth in Atlanta, Georgia, reading glossy fashion magazines for free in the local newsstand is keenly felt in the show, which features images that channel the golden day of fashion editorial, such as his image Lara stone with Fuji pool (2022) and a portrait of the same year of Anna Wintour with the designer Telfar at Conde Nast’s headquarters New York. Brought together for the first time in New York, a city that both inspired Ethridge and where he found huge success, his ability to balance the verve of 1990s editorial photography with a commitment to the American mundane is a satisfying sight to behold.

Here, images from the exhibition selected by Grace Banks make up a succinct body of “Polychronic” work.

By mixing contrasting everyday American ephemera like paper scraps and packaging, Ethridge creates a still life that depending on its context, could be interpreted as a work of fine art, or merely a series of objects. In the process, the photographer mimics the very concept of art and non-art.

The exhibition at Gagosian Gallery and its accompanying book American Polychronic (published by Mack Books) is full of Ethridge’s well known and more under the radar work— recently made Kodak Kodak and Tulips (2020) mixes with his cult Y2K image Refrigerator (1999).

There’s no chronological order to the show, leaving visitors the task to seek out early 2000s editorial portraits such as those of model Leigh Yeager and a 2022 shoot of Anna Wintour and designer Telfar sitting alongside still lives such as the show’s namesake Polychronic for the times of your life (2022).

The image Polychronic for the times of your life (2022) sums up the organized chaos behind Ethridge’s practice, and is one of the reasons the show is named Polychronic — the act of doing multiple things at once. One of his more recent works, here, the tumult of his early work comes together in a still life, featuring mixed media, collage and florals.

American Polychronic at Gagosian Gallery New York runs until 29 February.