Gagosian is pleased to announce |, an exhibition of new paintings by Sterling Ruby from the TURBINE series (2021–), opening at the gallery in Hong Kong on November 14, 2024. The title, |, is an ode to verticality. This exhibition marks not only ten years since the artist’s debut with Gagosian, but also a return to the site of that inaugural presentation.
In a practice that spans painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, video, ceramics, and textiles, Ruby alludes to key artistic tendencies and to the intersection of sociopolitical histories with the narrative of his own life. Through formal juxtaposition, he interweaves the disruption of aesthetic convention with the reexamination of civil structures. In Ruby’s 2014 exhibition VIVIDS, large-scale spray paintings seemed to gaze into the horizon in apparent anticipation of changes to come. Those works’ horizontal orientation stands in stark contrast to the precariously balanced compositions of the new TURBINE paintings on view in Hong Kong.
Each work contains a central totemic form built from thin strips of cardboard encrusted with oil paint. These columns sit atop fields of equally thick paint spread across colored canvas. Formally and socially, verticality defines integrity. Historically a measurement of excellence, it is associated with progress, status, and respect. It is also, however, subject to collapse. For a person to collapse indicates exhaustion or illness, conditions alluded to in the titles of Ruby’s paintings Syncope and Keel (all works 2024). For a building to collapse indicates passage—of time, function, use, regime, or war.
