如標題所示,目前的作品是拉斯查於2017年開始的《窺探場景》的系列作。該系列以雄偉恬靜的山脈和詩一般的田園風光為特徵,描繪了人們在旅遊書頁中、明信片和荷里活電影中能看到令人驚嘆的自然風光。回顧早期的《山脈》系列畫作,《窺探場景》似乎也致敬派拉蒙影業公司標誌,是對美國電影業和洛杉磯文化的致意,兩者皆為拉斯查的作品貢獻重要訊息。《窺探場景》系列中,山脈無法完整可視,觀眾欣賞風景時就像透過窗戶或相機鏡頭凝望。藝術家將此種取景技術敘述為「光暈效應」:「當使用框架或窺孔光暈效應時,會讓人像是在看進窗內或望向窗外。對我而言,或多或少,像是看向窗外。你可能會說他瞄向窗外根本就是個偷窺狂。這卻讓我只是一個普通的觀景者。」 i
Quintessentially American, Ed Ruscha is an L.A.-based artist whose art, like California itself, is both geographically rooted and a metaphor for an American state of mind. Ruscha is a deft creator of photography, film, painting, drawing, prints and artist books, whose works are simultaneously unexpected and familiar, both ironic and sincere.
His most iconic works are at turns poetic and deadpan, epigrammatic text with nods to advertising copy, juxtaposed with imagery that is either cinematic and sublime or seemingly wry documentary. Whether the subject is his iconic Standard Gas Station or the Hollywood Sign, a parking lot or highway, his works are a distillation of American idealism, echoing the expansive Western landscape and optimism unique to postwar America.