News / Sterling Ruby / Events

November 23–December 23, 2023
Sogetsu Kaikan, Tokyo
www.sogetsu.or.jp

In SPECTERS TOKYO, Sterling Ruby’s first public installation in Japan, the artist creates a dialogue with Isamu Noguchi’s indoor stone garden Heaven (1977–78), which is permanently installed in the lobby of the Sogetsu Foundation headquarters. Exploring the interactions between the living and the dead, Ruby’s site-specific work draws influence from kaidan, a genre of Japanese ghost stories. The otherworldly scene includes spectral figures made from heavily worn, tattered textiles and found objects that are suspended from the ceiling like puppets.

Tuesday, March 2, 2021, 12pm est

Sterling Ruby will speak with Tim Blanks, editor of the Business of Fashion, about his artistic process and foray into haute couture, as well as how he has stayed creative during the pandemic. The haute couture collection was created in Ruby’s Los Angeles studio, expanding the idea of the artist’s studio as atelier. Garment construction—from pattern-drafting and 3-D draping to dyeing, washing, and rinsing—occurs under the same roof as metalworking, oil painting, and ceramic firing. To join the online event, register at businessoffashion.zoom.us.

January 25–28, 2021

Sterling Ruby debuts his first haute couture collection, APPARITIONS, on January 28, during Haute Couture Week spring/summer 2021. Created at the invitation of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode in Paris, the collection explores the intersection of fashion, art, craft, and culture. Responding to the tension between historical and contemporary American narratives, figures walk like specters in a post-apocalyptic landscape imagined from footage filmed by Ruby in an empty paintball park in Southern California. Created in Ruby’s studio in Los Angeles, the S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA. couture expands the idea of the artist’s studio as atelier. Garment construction—from pattern-drafting and 3-D draping to dyeing, washing, and rinsing—occurs under the same roof as metalworking, oil painting, and ceramic firing. To watch the show, visit srstudio.com.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020, 7–8pm est

Sterling Ruby will speak with former Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden chief curator Stéphane Aquin about his multifaceted art practice and his monumental sculpture DOUBLE CANDLE (2018), recently acquired by the museum and installed in their Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. In addition to demonstrating Ruby’s belief in an embedded unification of both formal and political concerns, DOUBLE CANDLE brings together his interest in textiles and “soft sculpture”—the 23-foot-tall bronze sculpture is based on a “soft” version of the work that was recently on view in an exhibition surveying Ruby’s work at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. This virtual event is part of Talking to Our Time, the Hirshhorn’s online series of free talks featuring a diverse group of artists and collectives. To join, register at smithsonian.zoom.us.

November 30, 2020–January 31, 2021
gagosian-deitch.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Future, the sixth in a series of annual thematic exhibitions presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch during Art Basel Miami Beach. Previously staged at the historic Moore Building in the Miami Design District, this year the collaborative project will be hosted on a new stand-alone website.

November 16–December 14, 2020

Gagosian is pleased to support the Coalition for the Homeless’s Artist Plate Project fundraiser. Artwork by fifty artists, including Cecily Brown, Katharina Grosse, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Andy Warhol, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool, is featured on limited-edition dinner plates produced by Prospect and made available through Artware Editions to support the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. All of the funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed seventy-five homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 9pm edt

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presents its biennial art auction, a fundraising event featuring both live and silent auctions hosted by Artsy. Donated works by early career and internationally recognized artists, including Sterling Ruby and Ed Ruscha, will be available. All proceeds support MCASD exhibitions and acquisitions. The live auction begins at 9pm edt on October 14, and the silent auction closes on October 15 at 8pm edt. To register to bid for both auctions, visit artsy.net.

Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLES is available for online reading from August 23 through September 21 as part of the From the Library series. Comprising two books housed in a slipcase, ACTS + TABLES was produced on the occasion of the Ruby’s 2019 exhibition at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London. One volume is dedicated to the ACTS series and the other to the TABLES series. In ACTS—whose title is short for “Absolute Contempt for Total Serenity”—Ruby captures liquid dye inside clear urethane and balances these pure prisms atop scuffed, inscribed, and spray-painted laminate-clad bases. The exhibition also includes TABLE (DOUBLE LAST SUPPER) (2019), the culminating work of Ruby’s TABLES, a series that explores the concept of personal and cultural archaeology. The book features a two-part essay by curator and critic Jenelle Porter and is designed by Purtill Family Business.

You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
—Timothy Leary

Gagosian is pleased to present Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video, an online exhibition of artists’ films and videos viewable exclusively on gagosian.com. The exhibition will be organized into a series of “chapters,” each lasting two weeks. The first chapter begins on Tuesday, May 19, 2020.

Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video employs the innate immediacy of time-based art to spark reflection on the here and now, taking the words of famed psychologist and countercultural icon Timothy Leary as its starting point. 

Thursday, March 5, 2020, 6:30pm
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London

Join Gagosian for a tour of the group exhibition American Pastoral. The show juxtaposes modern and contemporary works with historical American landscapes ranging from Albert Bierstadt’s depiction of the sublime in Sunset over the River (1877) to Edward Hopper’s tranquil seaside scene, Gloucester Harbor (1926). Gagosian’s Alice Godwin will focus on a select grouping of exhibited works that seek to challenge the idealized vision of the American Dream that has long been a rich topic of inquiry for artists in the United States. To attend the free event, RSVP to londontours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.

November 27–30, 2019
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London

Join Gagosian for a special screening of Sterling Ruby’s Dihedral (2006) on the occasion of the exhibition ACTS + TABLE, on view through December 14. In the short video, a voice-over intones a modified quote from sociologist Roger Caillois’s surrealist etymological text, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” as waves of color encounter a clear liquid. Dihedral illustrates the process that is captured in Ruby’s ACTS series, in which liquid dye is fixed inside clear urethane blocks. The film will be screened during gallery opening hours, from 10am to 6pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Opening reception: Tuesday, December 3, 5–8pm
December 4–8, 2019
Moore Building, Miami

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Extreme Present, the fifth in a series of annual exhibitions at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach, presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch. The Extreme Present will explore artists’ reactions to the conditions of our accelerating and increasingly complex world. The title is inspired by The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, a book by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, published in 2015. Their provocative thesis addresses the rapidly evolving digital era, half a century after Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking study on technology’s influence on culture, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which he coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Works in this exhibition explore concepts of media, communication, togetherness, and isolation.

Download the full press release (PDF)

Thursday, November 7, 2019, 6:15pm
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London

Join Gagosian for a tour of Sterling Ruby: ACTS + TABLE, currently on view at Britannia Street, London, led by Serena Cattaneo Adorno, Gagosian director, and Alessandro Rabottini, director of Miart, International Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art. The works in the show lay out Ruby’s critique of the authoritarian, exclusionary ideological underpinnings of Minimalism. He begins with familiar shapes valued by the Minimalists—simple tables and rectilinear blocks—but subverts them by defacing their smooth surfaces and exposing their physical means of production. The event has reached capacity. To join the wait list, contact londontours@gagosian.com. 

June 11–14, 2019
Fortezza da Basso, Florence, Italy
www.pittimmagine.com

After nearly ten years of exploration, Sterling Ruby will release his first ready-to-wear clothing and accessories line, S.R. STUDIO. LA. CA. The collection will debut at Pitti Immagine Uomo 96, the renowned menswear show in Florence, Italy, on June 13. Ruby has been selected as the special guest of the event. To learn more about the brand, visit srstudio.com or follow @S.R. STUDIO.LA.CA on Instagram.

February 9–April 21, 2019
Coachella Valley, Whitewater, California
www.desertx.org

Sterling Ruby’s fluorescent orange monolith SPECTER (2019), appears as an apparition in the desert as part of Desert X, a contemporary-art biennial in Coachella Valley, California. The artist’s brightly colored geometric sculpture creates a jarring optical illusion, giving the landscape the effect of a Photoshopped composite or collage, as if something has been removed or erased from the terrain.

Thursday, November 8, 2018, 6–9pm
19 place de Longemalle, Geneva
www.avv.ch

Gagosian is pleased to participate in the fall opening of Art en Vieille-Ville. The group exhibition Fire and Clay and works by Paul Noble will be on view to visitors after hours at our Geneva gallery.

Monday, April 23, 2018, 6:30–8pm
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA
www.gsd.harvard.edu

Sterling Ruby and Raf Simons, chief creative officer at Calvin Klein, will discuss their design collaborations. The two will be joined by Jessica Morgan, director of the Dia Art Foundation, for a conversation about the overlapping worlds of design, fashion, and contemporary art. To attend the free event, register at www.gsd.harvard.edu.

March 1–May 26, 2018
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–7pm
Gagosian Shop, Paris
gagosianshop.com

Sterling Ruby will take over the Gagosian Shop in Paris, creating an immersive environment featuring a selection of his graphic posters, laundry bags, and books.

December 6–10, 2017
Moore Building, Miami

On the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2017, Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch are pleased to present Abstract/Not Abstract, their third collaboration at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District. One of the great innovations of modernism, abstract painting continues to inspire and challenge artists. To make a fresh abstraction today following all the remarkable achievements of the School of Paris and the New York School is a daunting proposition. Yet through the use of innovative approaches, techniques, and technologies, this generation of artists is creating complex and astonishing new work that revitalizes the abstract tradition. Abstract/Not Abstract will include work by contemporary artists who redefine abstraction for our time.

Live auction: July 26
Online preview: July 27–August 9
Online bidding: August 10–23
www.2017ldfauction.org

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation is dedicated to protecting the world’s last wild places. Since 2008 it has supported over 200 environmental projects across all five oceans and in over fifty countries. This auction helps make it possible for the Foundation to continue supporting pioneering individuals and organizations on the front lines of environmental conservation and climate advocacy, and will feature donated artworks by Urs Fischer, Frank Gehry, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Lawrence Weiner, and Jonas Wood.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 6–11pm
4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris
www.art-rivedroite.com

Galleries located in the triangle d’or will be open to visitors after hours. A group exhibition including work by John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Edmund de Waal, Carsten Höller, Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, Taryn Simon, and Tatiana Trouvé will be on view at our Paris gallery.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017, 6pm
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
hammer.ucla.edu

Ruby will discuss the exhibition Dubuffet Drawings, 1935–1962.