Sterling Ruby

Supermax refers to the highest security detention prisons. As a reformatory, the Supermax system relies heavily on physical detainment and the concept of individual time. It is the true belief in most correction facilities like this that a prisoner will in time come to terms with his mistake. Unfortunately most prisoners tend to state that the deserted feeling that this isolation gives them manifests an insanity prior to repentance.

Working across disciplines, including drawing, photography, sculpture, video and performance, Sterling Ruby is concerned with the interstices between freedom and control, expression and silence, the individual and the communal. His works change and challenge the definition of the regressive by pushing into territory that could be described as a transient state. Using his own interpretation of the Supermax system, Ruby has been developing an environment where attempts at expression are seen as nothing more than signs of criminality. Ruby's concept of Supermax addresses the antagonism between larger social structures and individual desire. His work can be primordial, expressive, aggressive, and sexual. Additionally, a tension is generated between the formal, structural, and geometric aspects of the work and its more amorphous, messy qualities. Ruby's activation of the most primeval aspects of the human animal, without denying the complexities of our elaborate consciousness, offers a liberating example of the undeniable power of instinct and explores its conflict with the constricting structures of civilization.

For his first solo exhibition with Galerie Christian Nagel, Ruby has made a set of works that reflect different operations within this ideology. The freestanding “Supermax Wall” is a four panel window showing graffiti, scratches and signatures found throughout Los Angeles storefronts. The configuration of the sculpture has certain homage to both Duchamp and Graham. The photographic prints titled “Carvings” are straight documentations of the same kind of writing found on trees, but unlike the windows that tend to get replaced the trees overgrow these identifiable marks leaving only abstract scarifications. The large pedestal “Inscribed Monolith 1” spotlights the un-individual aspects of certain Minimalist works and applies vandalism as a deterrent to such hierarchical circumstances within art history. “Still Life On Orange Background 1-5” are collages on neon safety orange depicting knives, sheaths, ceramic bowls and cups of utilitarian nature, which with time became objects of aesthetics. The final set of drawings in the exhibition titled “Thematic Drawing of Correctional Desires: Animals, Justice, Religion, Intimacy” center primarily on symbols of freedom seen directly through prisoner artworks. As a relation, the works in “Supermax 2006” do what Ruby most pursues in his work: displacement and dichotomy.

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Sterling Ruby
SUPERMAX 2006