Ed Ruscha U.S.A, b. 1937

In 1986 Ruscha made the original drawing on which this work is based, inspired by a phrase he saw inscribed in stone above the entrance to the science block of Los Angeles’s storied Hollywood High School. In the current global political climate, where suspicion and demonisation of science and medicine have been widespread, this prescient image has gained new resonance and topicality. In the processes of revelation in the often circuitous path toward truth, science and scientific thinking intersect with art—probing and searching intellectually and philosophically while seeking material consequences and outcomes. Like the most elegant of scientific theories, Ruscha’s images and idioms are at once irreducibly straightforward and heroically expansive.