Rockaway

The mood of Roe Ethridge's Rockaway, NY suggests a nostalgic depiction of scenes from a coastal village. The snow-covered boardwalk, the cemetery, the shops in town, and a quiet street in late summer all appear at first glance to be genre scenes, revealing Ethridge's casual application of diverse pictorial modes and themes. The locales blend, imitate and disguise one another. Photographed in disparate geographical sites, from St. Barts to upstate New York, Ethridge plays the roles of both a thematic archivist and a wandering narrator, mapping an uncertain ground in which it is unclear if the representation is a blank image, nothing more than the sum of it's surface, or the fountainhead of some deeper significance. In 2003, Ethridge was given the cover of the October issue Artforum. Kate Bush wrote, "As technically adept as a commercial photographer yet as thoughtful as a Conceptualist about photography's role and meaning in the modern world, Ethridge believes the ubiquity of the photograph and the instantaneity of its transmission and reception in this age of increasing "ecstatic communication" is to be embraced rather than mourned. In his work there appears no cause and no ending, no discrimination between editorial and art, between document and construct, between technology and affect." Roe Ethridge was born in Miami in 1969 and currently lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries across the U.S. and Europe--most recently in solo shows at the Institutes of Contemporary Art in Boston, Palm Beach and Philadelphia, as well as at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, Andrew Kreps, New York and Greengrassi Gallery, London.