Gagosian will present Ed Ruscha: Talking Doorways at its rue de Castiglione gallery in Paris from October 22 through December 3, 2025. The exhibition introduces a series of new paintings where Ruscha turns away from his familiar depictions of exterior façades and directs attention to private interiors. The presentation in Paris coincides with Says I, to Myself, Says I, another body of work shown at Gagosian’s Davies Street gallery in London from October 14 to December 19.
For more than sixty years, Ruscha has explored architecture and infrastructure, from gas stations and apartment buildings to museums, industrial structures, and residential houses. With Talking Doorways, he moves into interior space for the first time, developing surfaces with subtle stippling that create gradients of light. The rooms remain bare except for doorframes and molding, and each painting features a doorway through which a phrase enters the space. These words are carried on bands of color that suggest both soundwaves and beams of light.
This new direction connects to Ruscha’s interest in the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916), whose work often portrayed quiet interiors. Hammershøi’s restrained palette and close attention to detail fascinated Ruscha, who remarked, “I began to see the insides of walls with moldings and wainscoting and little curbs and things that intrigued me. And while my work is nothing like his, I can say that his work has inspired me. He’s more plainspoken and downright rigid compared to what people do today. Formal and rigid and cold, but still making a true statement.”
Ruscha’s own paintings take inspiration from this sensibility but disrupt it through the presence of painted texts. These words enter the empty rooms as if voicing an unseen conversation. Says I to Myself Says I (2025), a work that stretches ten feet, presents its title phrase as three painted bands divided by doorways, visualizing speech as both repetition and echo. Drawn from vernacular language, the words create a palindromic rhythm while reinforcing Ruscha’s interest in language as a visual form.
The dual exhibitions in Paris and London extend Ruscha’s longstanding dialogue with architecture, interiors, and language. Together, they affirm his ongoing investigations into how words, space, and image intersect. To accompany the exhibitions, Gagosian will publish a catalogue dedicated to these new works.
Ed Ruscha: Talking Doorways
October 22 – December 3, 2025
9 rue de Castiglione, Paris
