Following the ever more frequent exchange between east and west coast, LA-based “less-than-high art” crafter Sterling Ruby is the protagonist of two important shows in New York.
The first opens tonight at Metro Pictures’s upstairs gallery, where Ruby will display “Kiln Works,” a series of ceramics, a practice in which the artist has been involved since 1998. As written by fellow artist Richard Hawkins in Flash Art, “Ruby’s Ceramics are evidence of a certain antipathy toward austerity.”
The show – a group of vivid-colored, metallic surfaces and indistinct forms resembling baskets, vessels and body parts inspired by the use of clay as a art therapy – is due to open on February 21. The day after the artist will inaugurate his first solo show at the Drawing Center. On this occasion Ruby will present “Chron,” which comprises a selection of approximately 50 works – exhibited together for the first time – and a new large-scale piece created exclusively for the show, which will be accompanied by issue 76 of Drawing Papers, a 16-page artist book published by the Drawing Center, featuring an essay by Erik Frydenborg and a selection of black-and-white pictures of the works on view.
The exhibition (from February 22 to March 27) is curated by Drawing Center curator João Ribas, who will discuss Ruby’s oeuvre on Saturday February 23 at 5 pm, together with the artist himself. This double event follows recent solo shows at the MOCA, Los Angeles, GAMeC, Bergamo (Italy) and Emi Fontana gallery in Milan, as well as numerous participations on important surveys such as the Moscow Biennial (2007), the California Biennial (2006) and “Red Eye: L.A. Artists,” at the Rubell Collection in Miami (2006).
