Sterling Ruby
dal 21/1/2004 al 28/2/2004
Segnalato da
21/1/2004
Sterling Ruby
Foxy Productions, New York
Disintegrating Identities Morph into One Solid Rainbow. Ruby probes the amorphous nature of marginal environments and activities. Materials and gestures mark sites of violence, sex and drug-use, forming a charged exhibition of risk and rapture. Ruby's work is fuelled by an exciting visual fluidity and emotional intensity that slices through popular culture, art history, psychology and politics with a raw and daring vision.
DISINTEGRATING IDENTITIES MORPH INTO ONE SOLID RAINBOW
Foxy Production presents Disintegrating Identities Morph into One
Solid Rainbow, the first New York solo exhibition of LA-based
artist, Sterling Ruby. Ruby probes the amorphous nature of marginal
environments and activities. Materials and gestures mark sites of
violence, sex and drug-use, forming a charged exhibition of risk and
rapture. Ruby's work is fuelled by an exciting visual fluidity and
emotional intensity that slices through popular culture, art
history, psychology and politics with a raw and daring vision.
Disintegrating Identities combines sculpture, video, drawing and
photography to explore transient substances, spaces and
psychologies. Creating an unruly visceral space, spray painted
plywood walls act as a backdrop to a sculptural web of platted hair
extensions, dyed latex, wool, and glazed ceramics. In the video,
Transient, Ruby suspensefully explores corporeal dissolution and
abjection: Survivalist rituals performed in LA's wastelands are
inter-cut with dreamy pans of a ceramic sculpture, while a
disturbing voice tells of being kidnapped as a child and how the
experience has informed a surreal state of mind. In a series of
drawings using found photographs, nail polish and pencil, Ruby
morphs depth and surface: the geometric disintegrates into the
organic and signifiers of desire leave residues of violence and
deterioration. Two large photographs evoke a monstrous and beautiful
fragility: in Bed of John, tarred sandbags form a wound-like cavity
adjacent to a cindered trash bin, while in Spectrum Tree, an
isolated vandalized tree is embedded in a
hallucinogenic landscape.
Sterling Ruby was born in 1972 in Bittburg, Germany and now lives in
Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and is
currently an MFA candidate at the Art Center College of Design,
Pasadena. He has exhibited and screened work at Tate Britain, London
(2003); Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles (2003); The Bower, San Antonio
(2003); Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2003); 1R Gallery, Chicago
(2003); The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2003); with
Kirsten Stoltman at LFL, New York (2003-4). Through February 2004,
he will participate in a group exhibition at Southfirst Art,
Brooklyn.
Reception: Thursday, January 22, 6.00 - 8.00 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11.00 am - 6.00 pm
In the image: Spectrum: Tree, Lambda print on plexiglas, 60 x 45 inches, 2004.
Upcoming at FP - March 4: Ester Partegàs (featured in Flash Art
International’s January focus on Spain) - April: Paper Rad; June:
The Man and the Crowd. July: The Infinite Fill Show - a concept by
Cory Arcangel/BEIGE; September: David Noonan.
Foxy Production is a contemporary art gallery that provides a focus
for inter-disciplinary practices, interactive situations and
collaborative ventures.
Foxy Production is directed by:
Michael Gillespie and John Thomson.
FOXY PRODUCTION
547 WEST 27 ST, FL 6
NEW YORK NY 10001
Between 10 and 11 avenues
t: 212 239 2758