Ed Ruscha’s new twin exhibitions at Gagosian, Says I, to Myself, Says I in London and Talking Doorways in Paris, prove how relevant the artist still is. Both shows open within a week of each other this autumn, and together they read like two sides of a single sentence: one about material, the other about space.

In London, at Gagosian’s Davies Street gallery, Ruscha presents a series of paintings on unprimed linen, the first time he’s built an entire show around this raw surface. The linen changes the tone. It absorbs the paint, dulls the edges, and turns the words, short phrases like It’s It or And What Not, into key messages. Each composition is stripped down: white serif letters, a black tapering underline, an open field.

The unprimed fabric matters. Ruscha has always worked between the coolness of typography and the grit of the real world; here, that friction happens within the canvas itself. The weave of the linen interrupts the smoothness of the letters.

Across the Channel, Talking Doorways at Gagosian Paris turns that idea outward. The new paintings depict interiors defined by doorframes and mouldings, with phrases suspended mid-movement as if crossing from one room to another.

Seen together, the two exhibitions map the tension between surface and space, inside and outside. London’s works hold language still; Paris’s let it move. The dialogue between them feels clear and intentional, less a retrospective pairing than an active investigation.

Ruscha, now in his late eighties, has no need to prove his relevance. But these shows remind us that his discipline lies in economy, not nostalgia. In London, the paintings demand proximity. You lean in, reading texture before text. In Paris, you step back, watching the phrase travel across a painted room. Both gestures, approach and distance, describe how Ruscha continues to work: close to language. The two shows are modest in scale but ambitious in thought. Ruscha’s genius has always been to make language visual without turning it into design. Here, that clarity sharpens again.