This One by Ed Ruscha (2023) is the most turbulent of the suite after Final Say. Red and black diagonal lines sweep across the plate from lower left to upper right, THIS above ONE below in large serif capitals that tilt to match the diagonal rush — the whole image canted, as though the phrase is moving through the fram. The letters are hollow, their interiors pale against the rushing marks, readable but caught in motion.

THIS ONE is among the most context-dependent phrases in the English language. It means nothing without a referent — a gesture, a glance, a finger pointing at something the listener can see. Removed from that context, it becomes a kind of placeholder, a phrase that implies a choice has been made without disclosing what was being decided between. Ruscha had been drawn to exactly this quality of language throughout his career — words that carry the shape of meaning without its content, phrases that feel complete and are structurally incomplete. THIS ONE is perhaps the purest example in the 2023 suite: two words that gesture toward something that is not there.

The diagonal tilt distinguishes this print from others in the group. Zat So is static and frontal; Baby Jet and At a Clip run horizontally; Final Say shares the diagonal but moves in the opposite direction. THIS ONE leans forward, the phrase and its interference aligned in a single upward rush that gives the work an urgency the other prints in the suite deliberately avoid. Whether that urgency is ironic — a gesture of selection applied to a phrase that cannot select anything — is the kind of question Ruscha spent sixty years leaving open.

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