About
I use many different media as a kind of schizophrenic labor strategy. It seems very easy now to say it, but it has taken me years to convey that this scattered routine belongs within a coherent trajectory. . . . There is a lineage that links everything that I do together.
—Sterling Ruby
Gagosian is pleased to present sculptures by Sterling Ruby at Britannia Street. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery in London. On view will be works from two series, ACTS (2006–18) and TABLES (2015–19).
In an oeuvre spanning sculpture, ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, video, and garments, Ruby continually returns to themes of societal and art historical friction, generating feelings of anxiety and agitation by contrasting clean lines and recognizable objects with coarse and uncanny forms. ACTS + TABLE lays out Ruby’s critique of the authoritarian, exclusionary ideological underpinnings of Minimalism. He begins with familiar shapes valued by the Minimalists—simple tables and rectilinear blocks—but subverts them by defacing their smooth surfaces and exposing their physical means of production.
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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.
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.
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.
News
Art Fair
Art Basel Miami Beach Online
Gagosian Online
November 29–December 7, 2020
Presented in four forty-eight-hour cycles
gagosian.com
OVR: Miami Beach
VIP preview: December 2–4, 2020
Public viewing: December 4–6, 2020
artbasel.com
On the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2020, which was canceled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gagosian is pleased to present works by modern and contemporary masters on two concurrent online platforms: Gagosian Online, which will feature four individually curated groupings of artworks in forty-eight-hour cycles, and OVR: Miami Beach.
Helen Frankenthaler, Distant Barrier, 1992 © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Online Reading
Sterling Ruby
ACTS + TABLES
Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLES is available for online reading from August 23 through September 21 as part of the From the Library series. Comprising two books housed in a slipcase, ACTS + TABLES was produced on the occasion of the Ruby’s 2019 exhibition at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London. One volume is dedicated to the ACTS series and the other to the TABLES series. In ACTS—whose title is short for “Absolute Contempt for Total Serenity”—Ruby captures liquid dye inside clear urethane and balances these pure prisms atop scuffed, inscribed, and spray-painted laminate-clad bases. The exhibition also includes TABLE (DOUBLE LAST SUPPER) (2019), the culminating work of Ruby’s TABLES, a series that explores the concept of personal and cultural archaeology. The book features a two-part essay by curator and critic Jenelle Porter and is designed by Purtill Family Business.
Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLES (London: Gagosian, 2019)
Screening
Sterling Ruby
Dihedral
November 27–30, 2019
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London
Join Gagosian for a special screening of Sterling Ruby’s Dihedral (2006) on the occasion of the exhibition ACTS + TABLE, on view through December 14. In the short video, a voice-over intones a modified quote from sociologist Roger Caillois’s surrealist etymological text, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” as waves of color encounter a clear liquid. Dihedral illustrates the process that is captured in Ruby’s ACTS series, in which liquid dye is fixed inside clear urethane blocks. The film will be screened during gallery opening hours, from 10am to 6pm. The event is free and open to the public.
Sterling Ruby, Dihedral, 2006 (still) © Sterling Ruby
Tour
Sterling Ruby
ACTS + TABLE
Thursday, November 7, 2019, 6:15pm
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London
Join Gagosian for a tour of Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLE, currently on view at Britannia Street, London, led by Serena Cattaneo Adorno, Gagosian director, and Alessandro Rabottini, director of Miart, International Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art. The works in the show lay out Ruby’s critique of the authoritarian, exclusionary ideological underpinnings of Minimalism. He begins with familiar shapes valued by the Minimalists—simple tables and rectilinear blocks—but subverts them by defacing their smooth surfaces and exposing their physical means of production. The event has reached capacity. To join the wait list, contact londontours@gagosian.com.
Installation view, Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLE, Gagosian, Britannia Street, London, October 2–December 14, 2019. Artwork © Sterling Ruby. Photo: Lucy Dawkins