Sterling Ruby

Working across a range of traditional and new media including ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video and textile, Sterling Ruby captures the particular aesthetic and psychological turmoil of modern American society. He navigates the conflicts incited by globalization, radical subcultures, masculinity and consumerism through the visual languages of urban graffiti and art history, as well as autobiographical references. Ruby continually combines and repurposes eclectic studio materials, defying established hierarchies and boundaries.

Born in 1972 in Germany to an American father and a Dutch mother, Ruby moved to the United States as a child and grew up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. This early exposure to traditional Amish quilt-making and redware pottery influenced his work with soft sculpture, ceramics and even garment-making. His multimedia practice has placed him alongside innovative sculptors such as Carol Bove, Mike Kelley, Rachel Harrison and Seth Price, while his paintings blend influences from Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Ruby studied at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He has since settled in Los Angeles, finding inspiration in the city’s literal and metaphoric landscape, and he has been included in prestigious international exhibitions including the Gwangju Biennale, the Taipei Biennial and the Whitney Biennial. 

-       SPECTER, 2019, Fluorescent orange monolith installed outdoors at Desert X biennial in California’s Coachella Valley

-       WIDW.CRASH,2018

-       WIDW. DEPOSITION., 2018