Born in 1972, Sterling Ruby is an American artist working in various aesthetic strategies and mediums. Living and working in Los Angeles, Ruby draws his inspiration from the city’s physical and conceptual landscape. His extensive body of work also engages with motifs related to autobiography, art history, and societal pressures. In general, his stylistic approach examines the tensions between Expressionism and Minimalism.
Ruby graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, in 1996. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, followed by an MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2005. His work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris, and others.
Sterling Ruby also currently has a solo show at Gagosian in New York, presenting his TURBINES, an exhibition of new abstract paintings by the artist. See more details.
The exhibition titled Beyond Boundaries, now on view at Concrete in Alserkal was organized under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan and in partnership with the Ullens Foundation. It was built around an extraordinary polyptych of Ruby’s signature spray paintings – the legendary SP paintings.
During the opening night, curator Jerome Neutres pointed toward the immersive and contemplative character of this extra-large polyptych, recalling the spectacular Waterlilies installation by Monet at the Musée de l’Orangerie, in Paris.
The works on display come from the Collection of Guy and Myriam Ullens de Schooten, Belgian philanthropists and collectors living in Switzerland. In 2007, Ullens founded the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art – UCCA – in Beijing. UCCA became the largest Contemporary art Museum in China and a worldwide reference in the art world.
11 NOVEMBER 2022–25 NOVEMBER 2022 | PART OF ALSERKAL ART WEEK