“Rude in the Good Way”: Gagosian Presents Roe Ethridge’s First Photography Exhibition in Athens

Gagosian presents Rude in the Good Way, a photography exhibition by Roe Ethridge, opening at the gallery’s Athens space on January 22

The exhibition marks the artist’s return to the Greek capital. In a previous project in Athens, Ethridge drew parallels between the hybrid nature of his practice and the multilayered symbolism of the Erechtheion. Exploring the boundaries between commercial, editorial, and studio photography, Ethridge encourages both conflict and fusion between different forms and styles. In Rude in the Good Way, he creates visual and conceptual links between his images both through their juxtaposition in the exhibition space and through their presentation in the accompanying book of the same title, published in parallel with the exhibition.

Rude in the Good Way brings together fashion shoots, portraits, still-life images, and interiors, incorporating different modes of expression and distinct visual codes. The work Chanel No 5 from 1924 on Tray of Pe”arls and Mirror Checkerboard (2025) was created following an invitation from Chanel to explore its rich archive. From it, Ethridge selected a vintage bottle of Chanel No 5 perfume, which awakened childhood memories of his mother. The iconic fashion house also reappears in Double Red Chanel (2025), a work based on Lila Moss’s recent cover for Vogue Japan’s November 2025 issue. By layering two versions of the same image in different sizes, one atop the other, Ethridge places the model’s doubled figure against a double sunset, creating a morphological echo that reverberates throughout the entire composition.

Three depictions of his partner and close collaborator, writer Lulu Sylbert, are among the most personal images the artist has created to date. Works such as the pin-up style Lulu in Green Lace and Fishnets (2025) capture, with intensity and immediacy, the details of Sylbert’s body and lingerie, portraying a subject defined by her own creative agency. In these photographs, Ethridge and Sylbert work together to explore how erotic imagery can be produced while avoiding the inequalities embedded in power relations. (A similar sensual atmosphere is present in LU Cookie Half Melted [2025], in which the camera focuses on two cookies, their melted chocolate coating, and a drop that has spilled onto the dark fabric background.)

In other works, Ethridge plays with the conventions of still life. Double Apple on the Beach_v2 (2020) again employs multiple-exposure techniques, giving a psychedelic dimension to an otherwise simple fruit composition. In Gohar Candle (2022), the artist zooms in on a lit candle by the New York brand Gohar, referencing similar subjects in art history perhaps most directly Gerhard Richter’s photorealist candle paintings from the early 1980s, which themselves drew inspiration from 16th- and 17th-century vanitas still-life compositions. Yet while Richter’s candle evokes calm and silence, Ethridge’s candle is “assailed” by air currents, its melted drips creating a dramatic, baroque sensibility.

Two photographs from 2008 were taken in the studio of painter John Currin. Flowers at John Currin Studio (2008/25) presents a tightly framed detail of a lush, multicolored bouquet, while John Currin’s Studio March 2, 2008 (2008/25) depicts a rolling table filled with paints and brushes, a wooden chair, and a furtive, suggestive glimpse of three of the painter’s provocative nude works. Commissioned by Art Review magazine, these images revisit the historically complex relationship between photography and painting, while also resonating with Ethridge’s current approach to romantic and creative interaction.

Photographs from the exhibition are included in the accompanying book of the same title, published in January by Loose Joints.