trails end restaurant, kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon places CONTENTS colour photograph 51 x 61 cm INTERVIEW 007 Kate Fowle in conversation with Sterling Ruby. SURVEY 000 Franklin Sirmans, Encounters with Sterling Ruby. FOCUS 000 Jessica Morgan, STOVES. STUDIO VISIT 000. ARTIST’S WRITINGS 000 APOLOGETICS, 2015 (000). ChRONOlOGY 000 Bibliography (000). 007 INTERVIEW Kate Fowle in conversation with Sterling Ruby trails end restaurant, kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon places colour photograph 51 x 61 cm basic instinct No matter how much video and film take on the apparatus of the installation format and create situations and spaces specifically geared toward the viewing of the work, there’s nothing comparable to discerning one’s own body in space via objects and sculpture. With the exception of those early video installations, rare is the occasion when finds a work by Ruby in sculpture or two dimensions that is not being juxtaposed with another object. The association between works is what make the artists tick seemingly and is evident of the hypertextual cut and mix aesthetic that is so apropos of Ruby’s art. Nothing is so precious it deserves to be rarefied by itself in Ruby’s oeuvre , which is why it is easy to speak of the work in series and bodies rather than in it’s singular object status. One thing that is less evident in the very early work, and specifically from his time in Chicago, is that he was also a student of clay and ceramics. At the beginning of Transient Trilogy is that long, loving close-up of the surface of a ceramic sculpture. The sculpture resembles ‘scholar rocks’ that were prized in China from the Tang Dynasty (7th and 8th centuries) for four paramount qualities or sculptural elements: thinness, openness, perforations and wrinkling. Ruby, however, came to 6 SURVEY SURVEY 7 trails end restaurant, trails end restaurant, trails end restaurant, kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon from the series uncommon from the series uncommon places places places colour photograph colour photograph colour photograph 51 x 61 cm 51 x 61 cm 51 x 61 cm Butler, Judy Baca, Andrea Fraser and most specifically Diana Thater, Ruby’s professor at Art Center. Emi Fontana also played a significant role with the work as a gallerist, advocate and enthusiast, when she gave Ruby his first Italian exhibition in Milan in 2008. In LA and at Art Center, Ruby fully embraced a multidisciplinary approach. Kelley was a teacher and friend, and later a boss when Ruby became his teaching assistant. Ruby made work in collage, drawing, photography, sculpture, video and performance, rigorously exploring all possible paths in a quest to attain mastery of each medium. The approach also kept people guessing and on their toes. While a lot of things changed between 2000 and 2010 in terms of our peculiarly American consciousness and how we love and respect our diverse cultures, there’s also something distinctly different about the work of the contemporary artist in the new millennium. It has to do with an embrace of new technology and the embrace of the ‘other’, that may have been fostered by a very global turn in the discussion on contemporary art at the end of the twentieth century, coinciding with the technological breakthroughs of social media with Facebook and Twitter launching in 2004 and 2006 respectively. With a decade of seeing each other on Facebook and almost a decade of sharing news via Twitter in addition to a solid five years of instantly posting the images that accompany our unique lives, maybe we can see each other a little better than previous generations . What Ruby and a few others were able to do by the end of the first decade of the new millennium was to work with the speed of new technology. And while formal attributes may reflect those changes, the accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that it moves with the pace of social, cultural, economical and existential change. He has been called a ‘one-man Bauhaus’ and he has averaged between 3 and 6 major monographic exhibitions a year since 2005. Additionally, he has been an integral part of the most conceptually disparate group exhibitions, especially because he has worked in so many different media. A body of work that at first seems to be a windingly drawn, compendium-like Jonathan Franzen novel, slowly reveals itself to be a well- constructed path of varied thoughts and chapters. 8 SURVEY SURVEY 9 trails end restaurant, epilogue kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon Are we becoming better or smarter with our image places literacy? Ruby knows that image is everything, though colour photograph his objects disavow such a sentiment. His shows are all 51 x 61 cm compositions of juxtaposition, each object or painting trails end restaurant, dependent upon another. No one thing is given primacy kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon in his telling. Certain works should be known as icons, places but yet they are not, perhaps because his project is so colour photograph vast. There’s no time to concentrate on making that 51 x 61 cm one image. In that way, everything he does is dependent upon collage, as was discussed by Natasha Garcia trails end restaurant, kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 Lomas, who has worked in the studio with Ruby as from the series uncommon a manager and facilitator for almost a decade, in the places ‘Eclpse’ exhibition catalogue. colour photograph 51 x 61 cm While the best art always reflects its moment, rare is the artist like Ruby who can touch on so many ideas and aspects of a moment in time. It is not only reflected in his interests but in the diversity of his materials and effectiveness with which he brings to bare his skill as a sculptor and thinker. There’s a Tony Smith in Sterling’s studio. I hadn’t noticed it the last time I was here but it’s there, boy is it there. It is screaming, in my mind: ‘Hello, I am art history, iconic and strong and deep and long, fuck with me.’ And, so Sterling does… 10 SURVEY SURVEY 11 trails end restaurant, trails end restaurant, kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 kanab, utah, august 10, 1973 from the series uncommon from the series uncommon places places colour photograph colour photograph 51 x 61 cm 51 x 61 cm 12 SURVEY SURVEY 13 000 STUDIO VISIT 14 INTERVIEW INTERVIEW 15 is identifiable, this is straightforward and that is simple.’ I was always told: ‘don’t use TRAILS END RESTAURANT, TRAILS END RESTAURANT, FOWLE: That main gallery at Hauser & Wirth is also quite a difficult space, which is KANAB, UTAH, AUGUST 10, 1973 KANAB, UTAH, AUGUST 10, 1973 that universal because it’s too easy’ and now I say ‘no, that universal is actually difficult’. FROM THE SERIES UNCOMMON FROM THE SERIES UNCOMMON something you seem to thrive upon. Visitors enter from one corner and have to leave the That’s the reason why you need to use it, because if your first reaction to it is, ‘Yeah, it’s PLACES PLACES same way, but then there is another open doorway directly opposite where you come in, a cup, I get it,’ then you’re like, ‘Why a cup? What does that mean?’ COLOUR PHOTOGRAPH COLOUR PHOTOGRAPH which naturally draws people’s attention, so there’s no natural dynamic established within 51 X 61 CM 51 X 61 CM the space itself. FOWLE: Then if that isn’t enough confusion, there is a huge basin hanging on the wall that is a bit like something from a tank and a soft sculpture that is a kind of figure that’s RUBY: That’s exactly right. It’s like you have to somehow get people to turn around been hanged... in the space. I quite like that. Generally from a logistical standpoint I really like the problems of architecture. It could be a super small, tall or big space but there is always RUBY: Actually it’s two figures copulating … again these are playful and simple something to push against or work with. I lamented the Hauser & Wirth gallery for materials and forms, but then they appear unhappy and restless. months. How do you install in a space like that? It was like being under a train track – top heavy, quite dark and yet so expansive. FOWLE: Exactly. That’s when I thought, ‘My God, I need to tread carefully between these characters’. There’s a real tension that gets brought out between them and yet at the same We had the dimensions of the beams posted in every studio and looked at them day in time they are all lined up and frontal facing, as if in a regiment. day out, because something told me that the show had to be taller than that lattice. I TRAILS END RESTAURANT, knew that you had to look through them to see the entire expanse of the work, because RUBY: Yeah, yeah. KANAB, UTAH, AUGUST 10, 1973 that would create an experience that seemed off, but would also start to crush, or at FROM THE SERIES UNCOMMON least flex the architecture. I don’t think people always get that about the work – that it’s PLACES FOWLE: Perhaps this is why at your openings people instinctively know that they are COLOUR PHOTOGRAPH not just about making big objects for big spaces, or small works because of a particular in the midst of this drama, even if it’s too busy to really see it.