Thursday, February 18 at 6pm | Sterling Ruby in person!
- Sterling Ruby, still from Transient Trilogy, 2005-9
Hailed as “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century” by Roberta Smith of the New York Times, Los Angeles-based artist and SAIC alumnus Sterling Ruby is known for his aggressive biomorphic sculptures, defaced minimalist forms, and large spray-painted canvases. His videos are similarly charged, referencing pornography, abstract painting, and evoking states of transience, entropy, and transgression. In Hole (2002), workers in the back room of a chain store surreptitiously and suggestively stuff merchandise into a hole in a plaster wall. Transient Trilogy (2005-09) finds Ruby playing both a drifter, who fashions talismans from the detritus of an overgrown urban wasteland, and a diva director, who belittles his beleaguered star. For Triviality (2009), Ruby trains his lens on adult movie star Tom Colt, stripped from porn’s traditional tropes and trappings, as he tries unsuccessfully to get himself off. Also on the program: Dihedral (2006) and Cartographic Yard Work: Dog Behavior (2009). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. Sterling Ruby, 2002-09, USA, Beta SP video and DVD, ca. 65 min (plus discussion).
STERLING RUBY (b.1972, Bitburg, Germany) lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Ruby takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, bodybuilders, the mechanisms of warfare, cults and cult members, and urban gangs. His work invokes minimalism as a means to expose underlying systems and social power structures. Selected exhibitions include: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (both 2009); GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (solo) (2008-09); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (solo); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; The Drawing Center, New York (solo) (all 2008); The Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art (2007); The California Biennial, Newport Beach (2006); The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The Turin Triennial (both 2005-06); Aspen Art Museum (2005); Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo, Amsterdam (both 2005). Ruby is represented by PaceWildenstein and Foxy Production in New York. His videos are distributed by the Video Data Bank.