Sterling Ruby: Long Live the Amorphous Law
@ Gene Siskel Film Center
162 N State St, Chicago, IL 60601
Opening Thursday, February 18th, at 6PM
Hailed as “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century” by Roberta Smith of the New York Times, Los Angeles-based artist and SAIC alumnus Sterling Ruby is known for his aggressive biomorphic sculptures, defaced minimalist forms, and large spray-painted canvases. His videos are similarly charged, referencing pornography, abstract painting, and evoking states of transience, entropy, and transgression. In Hole (2002), workers in the back room of a chain store surreptitiously and suggestively stuff merchandise into a hole in a plaster wall. Transient Trilogy (2005-09) finds Ruby playing both a drifter, who fashions talismans from the detritus of an overgrown urban wasteland, and a diva director, who belittles his beleaguered star. For Triviality (2009), Ruby trains his lens on adult movie star Tom Colt, stripped from porn’s traditional tropes and trappings, as he tries unsuccessfully to get himself off. Also on the program: Dihedral (2006) and Cartographic Yard Work: Dog Behavior (2009). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank.
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