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Lot Essay
‘I caught the whole DC punk scene. I saw Bad Brains and Black Flag. I think that’s where I began to understand that clothes could be an attitude, whether it was the local hunters in their camouflage and bright orange safety stripes or Henry Rollins on stage in just his gym shorts’ – S. Ruby
Sterling Ruby is a west-coast artist known for his punk rock attitude, biomorphic sculptures, hypnotic videos, and mesmeric abstract compositions such as BC (4185). The artist’s education and upbringing were as diverse and unique as his artistic practice is today: his work is informed by an eclectic range of experiences, including time spent working in construction, a brief career as a professional skateboarder, and work as a teaching assistant for Mike Kelley. Describing his technique as being based on a ‘dichotomous relationship to material’, Ruby states his adolescence as the key defining period of his artistic development. Using spray paint upon collaged and décollaged fabric, Ruby imbues BC (4185) with a hazy texture that blurs perceptions of depth and space. The artist’s gestures resonate as the amalgamation of found fabrics is manipulated and distorted through the use of acrylic and bleach; the work’s dark tones and graphic diagonal bars conjure a sharp-edged urban atmosphere of rebellion and angst. Its gloomier hues are offset, however, by a lozenge of pale blue that opens like a window in the lower centre, and the vivid vitality of a red square that punctuates the darkness in the lower right. This arresting composition reveals itself not to be as dark as originally perceived; a soft green breaks through the shadows, glowing against the graphic outlines of the collaged elements with the vitality of a riotous creative spirit.
Sterling Ruby is a west-coast artist known for his punk rock attitude, biomorphic sculptures, hypnotic videos, and mesmeric abstract compositions such as BC (4185). The artist’s education and upbringing were as diverse and unique as his artistic practice is today: his work is informed by an eclectic range of experiences, including time spent working in construction, a brief career as a professional skateboarder, and work as a teaching assistant for Mike Kelley. Describing his technique as being based on a ‘dichotomous relationship to material’, Ruby states his adolescence as the key defining period of his artistic development. Using spray paint upon collaged and décollaged fabric, Ruby imbues BC (4185) with a hazy texture that blurs perceptions of depth and space. The artist’s gestures resonate as the amalgamation of found fabrics is manipulated and distorted through the use of acrylic and bleach; the work’s dark tones and graphic diagonal bars conjure a sharp-edged urban atmosphere of rebellion and angst. Its gloomier hues are offset, however, by a lozenge of pale blue that opens like a window in the lower centre, and the vivid vitality of a red square that punctuates the darkness in the lower right. This arresting composition reveals itself not to be as dark as originally perceived; a soft green breaks through the shadows, glowing against the graphic outlines of the collaged elements with the vitality of a riotous creative spirit.