About
Sterling Ruby’s work engages with issues related to autobiography, art history, and the violence and pressures within society. Employing diverse aesthetic strategies and mediums—including sculpture, drawing, collage, ceramics, painting, and video—he examines the tensions between fluidity and stasis, Expressionism and Minimalism, the abject and the pristine.
Born on Bitburg Air Base, Germany, to an American father and a Dutch mother, 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: Bennet Perez
#SterlingRuby
Exhibitions
Sterling Ruby: The Frenetic Beat
Ester Coen meditates on the dynamism of Sterling Ruby’s recent projects, tracing parallels between these works and the histories of Futurism, Constructivism, and the avant-garde.
Sterling Ruby: TURBINES
Join Sterling Ruby in his Los Angeles studio as he works on new abstract paintings ahead of his exhibition TURBINES at Gagosian in New York.
Augurs of Spring
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
Sterling Ruby: Disjointed Monuments to Nothing
Alessandro Rabottini investigates the theoretical and formal underpinnings of Sterling Ruby’s career through the lens of the artist’s series ACTS.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019
The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.
For Notre-Dame
An exhibition at Gagosian, Paris, is raising funds to aid in the reconstruction of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris following the devastating fire of April 2019. Gagosian directors Serena Cattaneo Adorno and Jean-Olivier Després spoke to Jennifer Knox White about the generous response of artists and others, and what the restoration of this iconic structure means across the world.
Sterling Ruby: Bloody Pots
Ceramics expert Garth Clark explores Sterling Ruby’s practice in the medium, addressing the work’s allegiances and divergences from tradition.
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2018
The Winter 2018 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available. Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince.
Sterling Ruby: Winterpalais, Vienna
Mario Codognato, curator of the exhibition, discusses Sterling Ruby’s first-ever European survey, at the Belvedere’s Winterpalais galleries.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Frieze New York 2024
Sterling Ruby
May 2–5, 2024, booth B06
The Shed, New York
frieze.com
Gagosian is presenting new works by Sterling Ruby at Frieze New York 2024, including four paintings from the TURBINE series (2021–) and a selection of collages from the DRFTRS series (2012–). Incorporating the same materials and namesake mechanism as Ruby’s WIDW paintings (2016–), but also suggesting hurricanes and explosions, fire and conflict, the TURBINE paintings evoke speed and self-destruction, alluding to the Futurists and Russian Constructivism. Ruby again employs formal relationships in response to contemporary problems, pairing them with diverse cultural and historical references. In the DRFTRS series of works on paper, Ruby layers and formally arranges microcosmic and macrocosmic imagery, collaging photographs of spores and plants, particles and stars onto surfaces washed with paint.
Sterling Ruby, TURBINE. LITANY OF HAWKS., 2024 © Sterling Ruby
Public Installation
Sterling Ruby
SPECTERS TOKYO
November 23–December 23, 2023
Sogetsu Kaikan, Tokyo
www.sogetsu.or.jp
In SPECTERS TOKYO, Sterling Ruby’s first public installation in Japan, the artist creates a dialogue with Isamu Noguchi’s indoor stone garden Heaven (1977–78), which is permanently installed in the lobby of the Sogetsu Foundation headquarters. Exploring the interactions between the living and the dead, Ruby’s site-specific work draws influence from kaidan, a genre of Japanese ghost stories. The otherworldly scene includes spectral figures made from heavily worn, tattered textiles and found objects that are suspended from the ceiling like puppets.
Installation view, Sterling Ruby: SPECTERS TOKYO, Sogetsu Kaikan, Tokyo, November 23–December 23, 2023. Artwork © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Kenji Takahashi, courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo
Art Fair
Taipei Dangdai 2023
May 12–14, 2023, booth E10
Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center
taipeidangdai.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Taipei Dangdai 2023, presenting works by Louise Bonnet, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Yayoi Kusama, Deana Lawson, Takashi Murakami, Sterling Ruby, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Kon Trubkovich, Mary Weatherford, Cameron Welch, Anna Weyant, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Gagosian’s booth at Taipei Dangdai 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2023 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Ringo Cheung
Museum Exhibitions
Opening this Week
Janus
April 19–November 24, 2024
Palazzo Diedo, Venice
berggruenarts.org
Janus, appropriately titled after the Roman god of beginnings, is the inaugural exhibition at Palazzo Diedo, a new contemporary arts space in Venice established by Berggruen Arts & Culture. For the exhibition, curated by Mario Codognato, eleven international artists—Urs Fischer, Piero Golia, Carsten Höller, Liu We, Ibrahim Mahama, Mariko Mori, Sterling Ruby, Jim Shaw, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Aya Takano, and Lee Ufan—have conceived site-specific interventions in response to the architecture and original features of the eighteenth-century building designed by the acclaimed Venetian architect Andrea Tirali. The Polaroid Foundation has also contributed a special project that invites the participating artists to create an original work using the Polaroid 20×24, the world’s largest instant camera.
Jim Shaw, The Alexander Romances, 2024 (detail) © Jim Shaw. Photo: Jeff McLane
Just Opened
Effetto Notte
Nuovo Realismo Americano
Through July 14, 2024
Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
barberinicorsini.org
This exhibition’s title was borrowed from a work by Lorna Simpson, Day for Night (2018), which translates to Effetto Notte in Italian. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Flaminia Gennari Santori in collaboration with the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, the exhibition features more than 150 artworks from the collection of Tony and Elham Salamé that interrogate the meanings and functions of figuration in contemporary art and address questions around the notion of realism and the representation of truth in painting. Work by Derrick Adams, Louise Bonnet, Maurizio Cattelan, Urs Fischer, Theaster Gates, Duane Hanson, Rick Lowe, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Sterling Ruby, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, and Christopher Wool is included.
Richard Prince, Untitled, 2015, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut © Richard Prince
On View
For What It’s Worth
Value Systems in Art since 1960
Through June 29, 2024
The Warehouse, Dallas
thewarehousedallas.org
Looking at global, conceptual art tendencies since 1960, For What It’s Worth focuses on artists who generate, question, and infect value systems through their work. These systems might address exchange, social structures, or philosophical intangibles, and many of the selected works share an exploration of the codification of values through language and patterns of behavior. Work by Chris Burden and Sterling Ruby is included.
Chris Burden, Kunst Kick (3 photographs and text), 1974 (detail), The Warehouse, Dallas © 2024 Chris Burden/Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: courtesy Chris Burden Estate
Closed
Sterling Ruby in
Un patrimoine méconnu. Tableaux du diocèse de Paris du XVe au XXe siècle
October 18–December 16, 2023
Collège des Bernardins, Paris
www.collegedesbernardins.fr
This exhibition, whose title translates to A Little-Known Heritage: Paintings from the Diocese of Paris from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, places fourteen rarely seen paintings from the collection of the diocese in dialogue with a work by Sterling Ruby. Ruby’s ceramic sculpture Basin Theology/BRAVAMAX (2014) alludes to the rich Christian symbolism of the basin as a purifying vessel. Made by fusing discarded clay shards into a new form, the work engages the paintings’ sacred themes.
Installation view, Un patrimoine méconnu. Tableaux du diocèse de Paris du XVe au XXe siècle, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, October 18–December 16, 2023. Artwork © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Thomas Lannes
Press
Sterling Ruby Explains the References and Process Behind His Couture Debut by Luke Leitch
Vogue
January 28, 2021
Online
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The high art, high fashion world of Sterling Ruby by Alexander Fury
Financial Times
January 23, 2021
Online
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Two Monumental Sculptures Welcome Visitors Back to the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden by Roger Catlin
Smithsonian Magazine
August 18, 2020
Online
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Alex Gartenfeld on Sterling Ruby’s Show at ICA Miami by Katy Donoghue
Whitewall
December 3, 2019
Online
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Sterling Ruby, the lauded American artist turns fashion designer by Alexander Fury
Financial Times
June 13, 2019
Online
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How fashion designers are blurring the lines between runways and art galleries by Alexandra Lange
Washington Post
April 25, 2019
Online
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Sterling Ruby’s “SPECTER” Is So Bright, Even Your iPhone Can’t Properly Capture It by Haley Mellin
Garage
February 13, 2019
Online
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La céramique, nouvelle star de l'art contemporain by Andrea Machalova
Tribune de Genève
September 27, 2018
Online
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