ART CITIES:Vienna-Sterling Ruby
Sterling Ruby works in a wide range of mediums, from glazed biomorphic ceramics and poured urethane sculptures, to large-scale spray-painted canvases, nail polish drawings, collages and videos. Through his varied practice he conducts an assault on materials and social structures, referencing subjects that include marginalised societies, maximum-security prisons, modernist architecture, artefacts and antiquities, graffiti, bodybuilders, the mechanisms of warfare, cults and urban gangs.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Belvedere Museum Archive
In one of his major exhibitions in Europe, Sterling Ruby presents works made over the last decade that include sculptures in ceramic, bronze, steel and urethane at the baroque rooms of the Winterpalais in Vienna. Also his Soft Sculptures, hanging mobiles and a new series of tapestries can also be seen. The focus of the exhibition deals with military imperialism and the rhetoric of war as a clear homage to the man responsible for the construction of the Winterpalais, Prince Eugene of Savoy. Sterling Ruby takes over materials, techniques, images and objets trouvés, idioms and slang, static equilibriums, ratios of force and construction models, to then overturn their meaning and appearance in order to form completely new and independent visual aggregates and apparatuses. Exemplary in this process are the “SCALES”, mobiles which dismember and free objects from their mass and their weight by suspending them from the ceiling. Steel fragments and chains that form beautifully drawn arches are combined with drug test kits, bottles of bleach, trash cans and packaging materials. In these three-dimensional collage works, Ruby recalls both Alexander Calder and Bruce Nauman. Sterling Ruby’s “Soft Sculptures” appear as giant anthropomorphic or mummy-like figures with long tentacles. These sculptures made of fabric broach the subjects of gender, domesticity and “feminine” handicrafts such as sewing and quilt-making. The series entitled “FIGURES” consists of two inextricably linked doll-like bodies. CANDLES presents a material translation, wax becomes folksy-fleece fabric. Also on view are sculptures from the series “ACTS” (Absolute Contempt for Total Serenity). In these works liquid ink is poured into transparent urethane blocks. The huge tapestries on view were made exclusively for the Winterpalais. These “FLAGS” are made of bleached denim and canvas dyed in bright pink, yellow, blue and red. Up to seven meters long, the tapestries fluctuate between painting and handicraft, simultaneously quoting the American flag, Robert Rauschenberg’s post-modern compositions and traditional Amish quilts. The exhibition includes two ceramic works, Basin Theology/FFMRC from the series called Basin Theology, as well as Sandal, which presents a sandal with its tattered edges, the impression of five toes appearing deeply born into the sole, having been worn away by flesh over time, the imprint of which seems to have been solidified like a fossil.
Info: Curator: Mario Codognato, Belvedere Museum, Winterpalais, Himmelpfortgasse 8, Vienna, Duration 8/7-16/10/16, Days & Hours: 10:00-18:00, www.winterpalais.at
