Dear Reader,

This is Roe Ethridge and Polychronic is my new website.  The plan is to offer new stuff, old stuff and various pieces of content that I couldn’t find a place for through the usual channels of agency, gallery or publisher. 

Polychronic essentially means to do more than one thing at a time. It’s also a way to describe a cultural notion of time. In the moment, it feels like we are all polychronic by choice or by necessity.

thank you
Roe Ethridge

This year, the actor will star in a Marvel movie, a Disney movie, and her own Netflix show. Over a virtual slime-making session, Lum opens up to E. Alex Jung about family, depression, and the highs and lows of fame. - By E. Alex Jung

In front of a massive Calvin Klein billboard in Manhattan, Black transgender model, actress and activist Jari Jones popped a bottle of champagne while her own likeness looked down over the city streets. The image of herself she was celebrating is part of Calvin Klein's 2020 Pride campaign #PROUDINMYCALVINS, which features a cast of nine LGBTQ models including Jones, who identifies as a transqueer lesbian.  - Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

The photographer discusses the interplay between queerness and androgyny in fashion and her approach to making work during the pandemic. - By Wren Sanders

Her new roles—on Amazon’s Homecoming and in the summer horror movie Antebellum—are perfect for our unsettled moment. The eight-time Grammy nominee, style icon, and Prince protégé speaks from quarantine about fear, fury, and her hope for “a real uprising.” - PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLLIER SCHORR

Musician Grimes takes the cover story of Vogue Italia‘s May 2020 edition captured by fashion photographer Ryan McGinley. In charge of styling was Patti Wilson, with set design from Peter Klein, and casting direction by Piergiorgio Del Moro and Samuel Ellis at DM Fashion Studio. Beauty is work of hair stylist Chanel Croker, and makeup artist Natasha Severino.

Shortlist -  In this series we invite artists and writers to tell us about works of art, literature, film, or music that have influenced their work or are at the forefront of their minds today. Roe Ethridge shares the transportive powers of his playlist “Teenage Chemicals in 1985,” a soundtrack that began playing in those formative years and hasn’t stopped since.

Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer
without the presence and contribution of butch
and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own
aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.

By Kerry Manders

Poet Tan Lin recalls growing up in Athens, Ohio, with his sister, the artist Maya Lin – with specially commissioned photography by Roe Ethridge

It’s more about harmony and disharmony than making meaning or illustrating a thesis. It’s synesthesia. It’s a feeling. It’s a sound. It’s a vibration. 
—Roe Ethridge

Gagosian is pleased to present Old Fruit, an exhibition of photographs by Roe Ethridge spanning the past twenty years. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery in New York, following exhibitions in Beverly Hills, Hong Kong, and San Francisco.

In celebration of the Lunar New Year and the Chinese Year of the Rat, the designer has joined forces with Miami and New York-based brand Stray Rats on a collection made up of hoodies, t-shirts, and grunge-y striped wool sweaters featuring motifs and details inspired by the cute – or terrifying, depending on your disposition – four-legged critters, as well as Stray Rats’ signature graphics. 

The rising stars of 2020 may be decked out in the sepia-tinged tones and free-spirited fabrics of the 1970s—but they’re ready for the future.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN MCGINLEY

EDITED BY TONNE GOODMAN

When “West Side Story” débuted, in 1957, critics praised its lush, syncopated score, by Leonard Bernstein; its sardonic lyrics, by Stephen Sondheim; and the profane energy of Arthur Laurents’s script. But the choreography of Jerome Robbins, who also directed the musical, was its greatest revelation: his finger-snapping gang members seamlessly combined ballet moves with the body language of the street. In the subsequent six decades, some critics have suggested that the show’s portrayal of gang warfare was a bit romantic. Others have noted that the creators weren’t versed in Latino culture. Nevertheless, whenever “West Side Story” was revived on Broadway, the Sharks and the Jets moved exactly as Robbins had imagined them.

Ryan McGinley spent an afternoon in Iggy Pop’s back yard just outside Miami to capture a portrait of the singer (and his sinewy torso) against lush greenery.

Photography Daniel Shea, Styling Robbie Spencer

Harry Styles made his mark as a solo artist over two years ago with his rootsy, rock-leaning self-titled debut album. After nearly a year of touring theaters, then arenas, and a few deserved months off, he holed up in Malibu for six weeks to record his sophomore LP at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studios with producers Jeff Bhasker and Tyler Johnson as well as friends and collaborators like guitarist Mitch Rowland, drummer Sarah Jones and Kid Harpoon (a.k.a. Tom Hull). In Styles’ own words, his new album is “all about having sex and feeling sad.”

Practicing for over 25 years as a photographer and filmmaker, Yelena Yemchuk—who is an active and key photographer for such magazines as Vogue and Elle—incorporates her work in the fashion industry with a studio art practice focused on identity issues. This exhibition will take-over the architecture of the museum’s narrow gallery space with large-scale photographs. Additionally, a new short film Yemchuk completed in November 2018 will premiere at Dallas Contemporary in April 2019. The project will later travel to institutions in New York and Odessa, Ukraine.