Roe Ethridge at CAC @ Hyperallergic

CINCINNATI — In his 1996 article about David Lynch’s movie Lost Highway, David Foster Wallace offers the following definition of the term “Lynchian”:
An academic definition of Lynchian might be that the term “refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.” But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that’s ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it.
I recently spent some time as at FotoFocus 2016, a Cincinnati-based photography biennial now in its third installment. There will be more to say about FotoFocus overall — it features over 60 exhibitions and 100 events during its monthlong run — but at this point I’m prepared to deem the work ofRoe Ethridge — who as part of the biennial is having his first major solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) — Lynchian in nature.