ART CITIES: Rome-Sterling Ruby

Sterling Ruby is known for the multifaceted nature of his practice, which encompasses painting, ceramics, collage, video and photography, textiles, sculpture and installations. Working in a wide range of media, from the traditional to the unconventional, Ruby has created an oeuvre that, while remarkably diverse, is firmly rooted within a complex and coherent artistic strategy.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive

Often drawing upon autobiographical, art historical or sociological sources, the seemingly ‘incomprehensible’ visual range of Sterling Ruby’s practice embodies a schizophrenic, ‘post-everything’ state of perpetual fragmentation and synthesis. His practice involves a combination of philosophical enquiry and material investigation, the latter involving the seemingly endless repurposing, combining and recombining of different techniques and media. This too mirrors a shifting condition of constant deconstruction and reconfiguration, and the idea of a non-hierarchical, boundary-less universe. In the exhibition “Future Present”, Ruby contemplates our acceleration toward ecological collapse. Six large, bright, perfectly formed monochromatic droplets—monuments to blood, urine, oil, water, “total carbon,” and “greenpeace”—are positioned atop matching Formica pedestals, each of which is inscribed with initials denoting the tribute in question. The contrast between these pristine forms and the debased domestic material below articulates a schism between public and private, and the degraded definitions of each realm. Installed in the gallery’s ovoid space, these forms coalesce as a chorus representing the breadth of spheres, from the bodily to the chemical, affected by or further propelling environmental demise. An accompanying suite of small collages from the ever-evolving series “DRFTRS” (2013– ) features watercolor paintings of rainbows punctuated by photographic images of bones clipped from archeological magazines, and begs a poignant question: Ruby has described the medium of collage as an “illicit merger” implying conceptual as well as technical transgression. The examples on view in Rome are both analytical and emotive, again combining social comment with formal experiment. Inspired in part by the ruins of ancient Rome, the “DRFTRS”  collages manifest Ruby’s continued interest in archeological excavation, in the cyclical nature of humanity, and in all that we may still glean from that which is otherwise lost to time.

Born on Bitburg Air Base, Germany, to an American father and a Dutch mother, Sterling Ruby moved at a young age to the United States, where he grew up on a farm in southeastern Pennsylvania. There he encountered Amish quilt-making and Pennsylvania redware pottery, both of which directly inspired his initial forays into garment-making, soft sculpture, and ceramics. Ruby graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, in 1996. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, followed by an MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2005. Living and working in Los Angeles, Ruby draws endless inspiration from the city’s physical and conceptual landscape. A subseries of the “SP paintings” (2007–14), the “VIVIDS” (2014), are electric color fields inspired by the shifting, multihued skies that he encounters on his way to the studio, while the “SUBMARINE” (2015) and “TABLES” (2015 –19) series were created from hulking industrial parts sourced nearby. Ruby’s work often deals with the ways in which acts of defacement, like urban demarcation and graffiti, can produce a painterly sublime. Both in his “YARD” paintings (2015–16) and in his “WIDW” paintings (2016–), he taps into the speed and motion of collage, incorporating bleached fabric and cardboard scraps and combining abstract color fields with fragments of studio refuse. Continually pushing the boundaries between artistic mediums, Ruby launched a ready-to-wear clothing line in 2019.

Photo: Sterling Ruby, DROP. PISSING. (detail), 2021 Fiberglass, wood, spray paint, and laminate, 120 × 34 × 34 inches / 304.8 × 86.4 × 86.4 cm, © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Info: Gagosian Gallery, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome, Italy, Duration: 20/11/2021-5/2/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com