Through sculptural relief paintings that extend her longtime imaging of women and her fluid approach to materials and mediums, Ruby Sky Stiler refreshes the meaning of the occupational self-portrait. Employing acrylic paint, acrylic resin, paper, glue, and graphite on panel, Stiler builds each palimpsestic piece up through an economy of means and streamlined forms and figuration. She also embraces a lusciously maximalist approach to patterning via a dazzling array of motifs echoing forebears and influences—from Gio Ponti to William Morris to Kate Spade—mixed in with her own invented designs and the occasional list or note, penciled in on the fly… These “old woman” portraits recall the very first mention of a self-portrait made with a mirror. In The Natural History (77 AD), Pliny the Elder discusses Iaia of Cyzicus: “At Naples,” he wrote, “there is a large picture by her, the portrait of an Old Woman; as also a portrait of herself, taken by the aid of a mirror.”
Ruby Sky Stiler was born in 1979 in Portland, Maine, and lives and works in New York City. Stiler has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Saint-Gaudens Memorial Park, Cornish, NH; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, NY; and Nina Johnson Gallery, FL. She has been included in group exhibitions at RISD Museum, Providence, RI; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Hill Art Foundation, New York, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; The Berman Museum, PA; The Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, NY; Providence College Galleries, Providence, RI, Perrotin, Seoul; Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York; and JDJ, Garrison, among many others among many others. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA from Yale University. Work by Stiler can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; RISD Museum, RI; ICA Miami, FL; Fairfield University Art Museum, CT; and the Tang Teaching Museum, NY.
[text by Lauren O’Neill-Butler, excerpted from Nicelle Beauchene Gallery website: www.nicellebeauchene.com]
