2012 Catalogue Archive

One of the most intelligent and engaging artists to emerge in recent years, Sterling Ruby is able to dialogue with and devour ideas and movements from the past. A continuity of creation and destruction unfolds through much of his artistic practice, with the remnants or residue of one body of work producing the next pieces. And as with much of Ruby’s work, the line between found visual information and the artist’s controlled creation is blurred, seen in this large collage from his EXHM (Exhumation) series. The work appears to be both the leftover remnants from the creation of some other work (including the wrappers from gum and tea he may have consumed while making it), as well as a carefully balanced composition of geometric shapes and colors with a bright red rectangle at top, line at right, and drips at lower left holding the work in a visual equilibrium. Ruby (b. 1972 in Bitburg, Germany) lives and works Los Angeles. His solo museum exhibitions include Supermax, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; CHRON, Drawing Center, New York; and Grid Ripper, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo. His work has been included in group exhibitions such as New Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Dirt on Delight, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim, New York; MCA Chicago; LACMA, Armand Hammer Museum, and LA MoCA, all in Los Angeles; and Tate Modern, London, among others.