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| Sterling Ruby, Till Death Do Us Part Installation @ Gagosian |
Blue is the colour of life and death in Sterling Ruby's sumptuous works seen through the window of Gagosian's rue de Castiglione space. Multi-media collages in lazulite blue, furious scrawls, water stained paper, and the reminder of flowers blown in the wind fill the walls behind human-sized bronze sculptures of dead flowers painted blue. The flowers are mostly sunflowers charred with their heads bowed, what semblance of leaves disfigured by the elements. All of the flowers are in couples, bound together at their bases. Alternatively, they look at each other, their "faces" turned inwards, admiring each other.
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| Sterling Ruby, Till Death Do Us Part Installation @ Gagosian |
The flowers are somewhere between life and death. As the exhibition title suggests and the blurb confirms, they are saying their wedding vows, till death us do part. Beyond the obvious references to the mayhem and turbulence of life, the richness (and expressiveness) of art through the use of blue, if we anthropomorphise the flowers, and the traces of life in the paper collages, these sculptures are overflowing with emotion. In them, we see agony, the love of flowers that are bound together, the fragility and transience of life, sadness at the anticipation of passing. We also witness an energy swirling around the sculptures, as they weather their surroundings with dignity.
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| Sterling Ruby, Ghosts (9181), 2026 |
In Ghosts (9181), winds with the intensity of hurricanes batter the page and the vulnerable flowers in the corner. It is as though they have disintegrated before the storm is over. In Ghosts (9182), the threat has been and gone across fields of blue scrawls, having ripped through and left its traces in the form of diluted colour. Here, the flowers have escaped the path of the extreme event, but they are not without mourning and loss of their petals.
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| Sterling Ruby, Ghosts (9182), 2926 |
