NEWS
“Sterling Ruby and S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA. Pop Up”
Dates: Jul 6 – 15, 2024
Location: Dover Street Market Ginza
Sterling Ruby, American artist who is known for multi-disciplinary sculptural works, and his S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA. is pleased to present a pop-up at Dover Street Market Ginza from July 6th to 15th. This pop-up will take place in conjunction with Tokyo Gendai, an international art fair that presents leading contemporary art galleries from Japan, the wider Asia-Pacific region, and around the world.
In this pop-up, a selection of Ruby’s work will be available from limited one-of-a-kind T-shirts, GOURD NUT STEM BONE NECKLACE, Ruby’s experimental ceramic ASHTRAY series as well as the SPECTERS catalog which consolidates his two solo exhibitions held in Sogetsu Plaza and Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto in 2023. These collections will be available from July 6th and exhibited until July 15th.
One-of-a-kind T-Shirts by S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA.
Over the past decade, Ruby has created clothing alongside his artwork, developing garments from the same handworked fabrics featured in his pieces, and experimenting with the same inquiries, ideologies, and aesthetic pursuits. Inspired by American traditions, culture, and craft, and informed by years of textile development, the clothing and accessories of S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA. exist in conversation with Ruby’s previous work and further his investigation of utility as a wearable iteration of it. With a confluence of techniques and materials, the collection signifies a natural evolution of Ruby’s interdisciplinary work – and celebrates a decidedly new direction. In every T-shirt, prints adapted from original pieces by Ruby are emblazoned on appropriated shirts, the works of “SPECTERS” appear this time.
Price: 235,000 JPY + tax – 280,000 JPY + tax
GOURD NUT STEM BONE NECKLACE by S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA.
Sterling Ruby’s first piece of jewelry was modeled after sculptures for exhibitions in Tokyo in 2023. Made with Recycled Sterling Silver, 10 limited editions, one out of 10 is available at this pop-up.
It was lifted from his vast language of forms as a wearable artifact. The four organic elements consist of this handcrafted necklace; gourd, nut, stem and bone surface across various folklores, echo the agrarian and the autumnal, and both culturally ubiquitous and uniquely American. His interpretation of these elements is combined with this handcrafted necklace.
Price: ASK AT STORE
ASHTRAY by Sterling Ruby
ASHTRAY is a series of ceramic pieces, initially started as a glaze investigation. The form is a practice for containing pools of liquid, and he determines color combinations and firing times and finally these works have taken on a life of their own. Two ASHTRAYs are presented at this pop-up.
Price: ASK AT STORE
SPECTERS catalog
This catalog published by Taka Ishii Gallery offers an expansive look at his two solo exhibitions “SPECTERS” held in Tokyo and Kyoto in 2023. With a catalog essay by Minoru Shimizu and design by Satoshi Suzuki. Ruby builds on its themes by further exploring the installation “Specter” which is part of Desert X in 2019, he stepped into the world of folk magic and the supernatural. The artist draws influences from both Japanese and Euro-American myth and legend as well as from the artist’s own early interactions with colonial folklore. Raised a few miles from an infamous local spot known as “Hex” Hollow, the history of Ruby’s hometown in Pennsylvania was steeped in notions of witchcraft, hauntings and local legends. After a trip to East Asia in September 2014, Ruby also became interested in the ghostly tales deep-rooted in Japanese-Buddhist tradition, particularly kaidan, a genre of Japanese ghost stories, which evoked a greater curiosity in the artist in what comes after death. At the two “Specters” installed in Tokyo and Kyoto, the theme was not modernism as a specter, but the summoning of specters that have been displaced and repressed by modernism and these installations in Tokyo and Kyoto were regarded as a pair.
Price: 8,000 JPY + tax
Born in 1972, Sterling Ruby works with a wide range of aesthetic and material strategies from sculptures made of saturated, glossy, poured polyurethane, bronze, and steel, to drawings, collages, richly glazed ceramics, paintings, photography, and video, as well as textile works that include quilts, tapestries, garments, and soft sculptures. His work is a balancing act, maintaining a constant tension between a multitude of elements. It deals with issues related to the violence and pressures within society, and art history, even as it also reflects his personal history. In all of his work, he vacillates between the fluid and static, the minimalist and expressionistic, the pristine and the defaced.
Ruby’s solo exhibitions include “SPECTERS TOKYO”, Stone garden “Heaven,” The Sogetsu Kaikan 1F, Tokyo (2023); “SPECTERS KYOTO”, Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto, Kyoto (2023); “Heat. Minthe. Swells.”, Taka Ishii Gallery (TERRADA ART COMPLEX II), Tokyo (2023); Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome (2021); Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2021); the ICA Miami (2019) which traveled to the ICA Boston (2020); Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2018); Winterpalais, Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2016); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2012) which traveled to Centre D’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2012) and to Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2008). In 2014 he participated in the Gwangju Biennale, Taipei Triennale, and Whitney Biennial.
Ruby’s sculpture DOUBLE CANDLE (2018) is installed permanently at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. His works are included in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm among others.
