Sterling Ruby
Gagosian is pleased to present new ceramic sculptures and paintings by Sterling Ruby.
In his paintings, collages, sculptures, and videos, Ruby infuses the formal with the abject, allowing materials to melt and overlap in biomorphic and geomorphic aggregations. Ruby's current exhibition features the largest basins that he has produced to date in the Basin Theology series, as well as figurative and totemic ceramics that recall common artifacts. Ceramic cradles bear an eerie resemblance to graves, evoking the cyclical nature of human life, and otherwise abstract totems stand upright, like soldiers in formation. These deep, textured vessels contain studio remnants and discarded fragments set beneath viscous glazes. Their variegated surfaces feature coloristic effects resulting from different stages of kiln-firing. In the layered glazes that engulf shards of ceramic debris, vibrant, often eerie, landscapes appear. Entropy gives rise to an entirely new archeological form.