ROE ETHRIDGE

The exhibition represents a return to the Greek capital for the artist, who in a previous project there found parallels between the hybrid character of his work and the blended symbolism of the Erechtheion, a temple dedicated to Athena on the Acropolis. Exploring a space between commercial, editorial, and studio photography, Ethridge encourages the collision and comingling of form and genre. In Rude in the Good Way, he establishes visual and conceptual links between images, both through their juxtaposition in the gallery, and by their inclusion in a book of the same title published to coincide with the exhibition.

Rude in the Good Way represents a confluence of fashion shoots, portraits, still-life arrangements, and interior scenes, embodying disparate modes. Chanel No 5 from 1924 on Tray of Pearls and Mirror Checkerboard (2025) originated with an invitation to mine Chanel’s archive, from which Ethridge selected a vintage perfume bottle that evoked childhood memories of his mother. The ubiquitous brand reappears in Double Red Chanel (2025), which builds on the artist’s recent cover shoot of Lila Moss for the November 25 issue of Vogue Japan. By layering two differently sized versions of the same image atop one another, he sets the model’s doubled figure against a doubled sunset, establishing a formal echo that reverberates throughout the installation.

Three depictions of__Ethridge’s partner and collaborator, writer Lulu Sylbert, are the artist’s most intimate images to date. Works such as the pinup-like Lulu in Green Lace and Fishnets (2025) record explicit details of Sylbert’s body and attire, documenting a subject distinguished by her own creative complicity. In these shots, Ethridge and Sylbert work together to explore the production of libidinal imagery that attempts to avoid an imbalance of power. (LU Cookie Half Melted [2025] shows only a pair of the titular biscuits but finds something of the same sensuality in their liquefying chocolate topping, a droplet of which is smeared against the dark fabric ground.)

In other works, Ethridge toys with the conventions of the still life.Double Apple on the Beach_v2 (2020) makes further use of layered exposures, lending a psychedelic cast to an otherwise straightforward composition of pecked-at fruit. And in Gohar Candle (2022), he centers a flaming night-light from the New York designer in stark close-up, recalling renderings of similar subjects scattered throughout art history—perhaps most closely Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic canvases of the early 1980s (which were themselves inspired by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century vanitas paintings). But while Richter’s candle is calm and quiet, Ethridge’s looks windblown, with melted wax lending it a dramatic, Baroque appearance.

Two photographs from 2008 depict the studio of artist John Currin. Flowers at John Currin Studio (2008/2025) presents a closely cropped detail of a lush multicolored bouquet, while John Currin’s Studio March 2, 2008 (2008/2025) pictures a wheeled table laden with paints and brushes, an accompanying wooden chair, and a tantalizing partial view of three of the painter’s provocative nudes. These images, commissioned by Art Review magazine, reflect again on the always complex relationship between photography and painting, resonating powerfully, too, with Ethridge’s current examination of romantic and creative exchange.

A book published by Loose Joints featuring images from the exhibition will be released in January.