The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents the first solo exhibition in Switzerland by the Los Angeles based artist, Sterling Ruby – described by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith in a 2008 review as “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century”. Taking cues from artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Ruby works in a variety of different media. His work is a form of assault on both materials and social power structures. The show in Geneva will focus on one significant body of work within the artist’s practice that has not yet received specific attention: the “soft sculpture”.

Sterling Ruby’s prolific production including richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, nail polish drawings, collages and hypnotic videos draw on an extremely wide variety of sources, ranging from modernist architecture or street culture to the aesthetics of bodybuilding, highlighting the mechanisms by which societies and bodies are coerced.

The artist confronts the elements and forms of minimalism – one of whose aims was to eliminate all traces of the author (as if the work/object was self-generated) – reinterpreting them with a hypercorporeal, brutal and gestural expressionism that liberates the repressed urges of the unconscious. The minimalists’ “less is more” now reads as the “more is more” of a hyperconsumer society. The artist counterpoints this modernist heritage with a multifarious body of work that operates via transformation, mimicry and assimilation – strategies that are at the fore in the artist’s soft sculptures.

In some of these works, using pillows, blankets and quilts, Sterling Ruby’s concern is an elucidation of an underlying terror or fear at the heart of the American concept of the domestic. At the same time the artist uses these materials – stuffed fabrics – to transform threatening or aggressive subject matter into playfully pop-like forms, alluding to the consumerist insatiability of Western capitalism. These sculptures also explore space and the “gender” of the material – which tends to have feminine associations – just as Ruby has done with other works, ceramics in particular.

Sterling Ruby will present a large-scale installation of new soft sculptural works designed especially for this exhibition at the Centre. “SW SET 1” includes radically gestural and corporeal pieces as well as more formalized geometries. The installation will occupy the full length and height of the gallery space, presenting the works in layers and heaps so that the visitor is hurtled into an aesthetic maelstrom.

Born in Bitburg, Germany, in 1972, Sterling Ruby

(American) lives and works in Los Angeles. Ruby has exhibited in many galleries and institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Galleria d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (Italy), The Garage: Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the CAPC in Bordeaux, the Sprüth Magers galleries in Berlin, Pace in Beijing and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels.

Curated by Katya García-Antón
This exhibition is organised in collaboration with the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (France).