Kathy Ruttenberg, Nature of the Beast: New Ceramic Sculptures

Careful What You Wish For, 2013, ceramic, 58.5 x 36 x 12 inches (149 x 91 x 31 cm)

 Kathy Ruttenberg

Nature of the Beast

New Ceramic Sculptures
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11th, 6 to 8 PM

April 11 – May 18, 2013

Stux Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of works by New York artist Kathy Ruttenberg, “Nature of the Beast: New Ceramic Sculptures”. Following her inaugural show at Stux last year, Ruttenberg’s new works continue to explore the interplay between consciousness, imagination and gender relations. This exhibition coincides with Charta’s publication of her first major monograph.

Comparable to the works of Adriana Varejao, Arlene Shechet, Louise Bourgeois and Maurizio Cattelan, Ruttenberg’s lush narratives are at once enchanting, idyllic and utterly devastating. Open-ended, stark ruminations on gender politics are decontextualized and reinstalled amidst foliage and creaturely beings. Men are proprietors of a wonderland women seem to be intruding, and love is torturous, ceremonial and decidedly omnipresent. It is difficult to determine whether the characters are humans masquerading as animals (or vice versa), or incidents of paused metamorphoses. Their nonchalant, lifeless poses are almost weightless, as if their bodies are simply well-primed, submissive theatres for bizarre scenarios of affection and violence painted on their outfits. Although formal and conservatively tailored, Ruttenberg’s fashions expose rather than conceal. The intense passion that fires wet earth into terra cotta can be seen and genuinely felt.

Ruttenberg does not resolutely sever herself from the canon of artistic ceramics, but rather capitalizes upon its blissful associations and clay’s incredible versatility. The innocence of ceramic figurines disarms viewers and purges their preconceptions to intensify the effects of absurd, visceral visions of, for example, a woman giving birth to a pony whilst lying in her lover’s frozen arms. The stylized woodland immediately transports her scenes to the realm of fantasy and fairytales, where innocence can be, curiously, both lost and gained as nature absorbs her characters’ bodies in brutally whimsical ways. Suspended in a magical world without history and away from political discourse, Ruttenberg’s works urge us to consider gender rhetoric and feminism in the context of corporeal consciousness and pure imagination. Simultaneously, her earthbound materials and fastidious sensitivity to texture and color interrupt this reverie to render her mise-en-scénes conspicuously tangible and real.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      -Lucy Li

Kathy Ruttenberg is a New York based, Chicago born sculptor. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and pursued advanced studies in Morocco and at New York University. She has been exhibited widely in the U.S., Korea, Spain and France. Ruttenberg’s work has received wide critical acclaim in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, The Independent and The Boston Globe. Her first monograph has just been published in 2013 by CHARTA.
 

For further information please contact the gallery at Andrea@stuxgallery.com.

Shimon Okshteyn, Standing on the Edge: post-digital painting

Nothing Stirred Within Their Depths, 2012, graphite, charcoal and digital print on canvas, mirror, 111 x 175 in

SHIMON OKSHTEYN

Standing on the Edge: post-digital paintings

Opening reception: Thursday, February 28, 6 to 8 PM

February 28 – April 6, 2013

Stux Gallery, NY is pleased to present “Standing on The Edge: post-digital paintings” a solo exhibition of recent works by Shimon Okshteyn.

Shimon Okshtyeyn’s “Standing on the Edge” is a multidimensional exploration of a state of mind where contradiction reigns.  This exhibition captures the unusually stimulating visual world of Okshteyn’s practice, marked by fastidious craftsmanship, strong compositional formats and unusual mixtures of materials, all leading to an inner world whose range is as complex as it is unpredictable and varied. His well-informed appropriationist tendencies are abetted by the artist’s urge towards classical traditions that balance gloomy introspection against outward looking strength. Added to this a coherent yet surprising use of thematic materials, a richness of invention, and a systematized build-up of narrative—all of these aspects make Okshteyn’s work irresistibly attractive to the eye.  This narrative is but one connective thread in Okshteyn’s rigorously conceptual art, which simultaneously embraces and critiques the interplay between the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. His use of photographic images is never merely copies of the already available. Instead, they extract a kind of photographic unconscious from the image, bringing to the fore suppressed truths about its meaning and its making. As influential curator/critic Douglas Crimp noted in his historical essay Pictures, “…underneath each picture is always another picture.”

The paintings in this exhibition are structured as pictorial compositions whose realism is given new meanings by the mirror panels installed in the same frame, creating a highly subjective space marked by tension and melancholy. The layered and atmospheric surfaces reveal the poetry of Okshteyn’s process. Silent and still, they nevertheless push the mind to look beyond its physical contours and envision vast landscapes, an ever-elusive horizon line chased by high-octane dreams.

Painted over photographic images taken by the artist himself, Okshteyn, as someone interested in the facts behind the fiction approaches his photographs as portraits. The girls depicted are real and completely complicit in their objectification. They have bought into the fantasy and willingly play their part in it. He neither condemns nor condones their amateur striptease for the camera but simply steals their images and claims them for his art. In the process, the pictures begin to reveal their models’ essential vulnerability. There is timidity and awkwardness to every pose. They are young women who seem desperate to please yet uncomfortable in their staged states of undress. Products of wet dreams, they reek of the normal.

Like the work of Mike Kelly, Charles Ray or Richard Prince, Okshteyn’s work in “Standing on the Edge” can be understood as an attempt to come to terms with his own maleness, however emboldened or diminished it may be. But Okshteyn does not limit himself to one gender. If his various female subjects are indeed surrogate self-portraits, “almost him” – then his actual self-portrait silicon heads littered across the gallery floor have to be read in tandem with the paintings of female nudes. These male and female types put into play the most made up tropes of masculinity and femininity, but the exaggeration is clearly performative. Okshteyn uses gender as a masquerade, freely shifting between roles.

“Standing on the Edge” offers the commentary about the power of images and the freedom we have to decide for ourselves what their agendas might be, provided that we could see past the lurid sensuality of the picture and take the opportunity to look beneath the surface.

Shimon Okshteyn (b. 1951) immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union in 1980.  His work is in many notable private collections and in permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, and The State Russian Museum of Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, to name a few. Okshteyn’s recent retrospective exhibition “Shimon Okshteyn: Dialogue With Objects” at The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia was accompanied by a fully illustrated, 350 pages catalogue raisonné, co-produced by The State Russian Museum and The Ludwig Museum and published by Palace Editions. 
Shimon Okshteyn lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. “Standing on the Edge” is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at Stux Gallery.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany this exhibition, including an essay by Beth E Wilson.

Image: Shimon Okshteyn, Nothing Stirred Within Their Depths, 2012, graphite, charcoal and digital print on canvas, mirror, 111 x 175 in.

For further information please contact the gallery at Andrea@stuxgallery.com.

Sokari Douglas Camp: Dressed to the Nines, Opening Thursday, Oct 25 6-9 PM

Jesus Loves Me, 2012, Steel, acrylic paint
Girl: 85x41x35 inches, 217x105x90 cm
Boy: 77x31x35 inches, 195x78x89 cm

Sokari Douglas Camp

Dressed to the Nines New Steel Sculptures

October 26 – November 24, 2012

Opening Reception Thursday, October 25, 6 – 8 PM

Stux Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Sokari Douglas Camp, CBE, “Dressed to the Nines”. Sokari is the 2005 recipient of the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Renowned for her powerful, monumental steel sculptures that address political themes that link her to her native land of Nigeria, her effortless integration of African aesthetics is instinctive rather than driven by Piccaso-esque fascinations, and her works can be compared to those of Nick Cave, Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare. Her new sculptures continue her provocative thesis with tender yet boldly visceral visions of the post-colonial world, and introduce daily lives of African immigrants in the West as a new subject.

Inspired by her observations of Pentecostal Londoners who outfit extravagantly to secure husbands and business partners as well as violence against Christians in Nigeria, “Jesus Loves Me” is vibrantly celebratory at its core. Pronouncedly influenced by the African art idiom, these sculptures are made from raw, blank shiny steel that is completely naked except a painted portrait of Jesus and some bold, hip eyewear. Their postures are casual and liberated, but also delightfully robotic like knights enclosed in ill-fitted armor. The ancient notion of religion and the ephemeral yet striking powers of fashion are united to illustrate a phenomenon that highlights the body and traditional beliefs as immovable centers of society.

The “Butterfly Head” is a pensive bust of a woman with shut-eyes. Seams from bluntly soldered steel that disfigure her face narrate a systematic process of construction and carry a sense of stern formidability. Her traditional headdress is bejeweled with incandescent, flower-like splatters of neon green plastic that also reek of toxic, radioactive waste.  A fluttering string of black butterflies with silver-lined wings meanders across the torso, face and headdress. Although stylized to buzz about like festering flies, they sublimate the heavy, industrial sculpture to a dreamlike state.

In works such as “Material Salsa”, Camp explores the lives of immigrants from a psychological, raw perspective. In this work, a mother and her son are holding hands. Even though the connection between them is permanent and confirmed, the son is turning and walking away. Both figures, although clearly linked by their skin tone and facial features, are more pronouncedly defined by their clothing. Despite her stiff, cage-like presence, the mother’s lace-like steel garment is intricately weaved with a delicate, feminine softness. The son’s white T-shirt and jacket are marked by Formula One symbols and clear connections to the complex institution of oil profiteering. It appears as if he is hollow inside the clothing, and his trousers are practically segments of oil pipes. The steel surfaces are plain and smooth, creating perfect backdrops for the overwhelming networks of symbols in contemporary society.

“In my childhood, robbers were tied to oil barrels to be executed, People still have a belief that we can sort out our problems by shooting the corrupt?” The sculpture “Purge” explores the horror of that thought. The figures are dressed in the most respected traditional attire. The two figures are conjuring music and dancing fervently on top of barrels designed to contain oil, the catalyst for chaos in the Nigerian Delta. A generous layer of bullet holes neatly sprinkles across the extravagant clothing, but the impact is so meek that the sculptor hurries to frame them with brushstrokes to highlight their presence.

Sokari Douglas Camp, CBE, was born in Nigeria and now lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Since the early 1980’s, she has exhibited widely in the UK, US, Japan and continental Europe at venues such as The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, The Art Museum of Minneapolis, Setagaya Museum, Tokyo and the British Museum. Shortlisted for Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth, she is also the recipient of the Saatchi & Saatchi Award, Princess of Wales Scholarship and Henry Moore Bursary. Douglas Camp received her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London; this is her second solo exhibition at Stux Gallery. -Lucy Li


For further information, please contact the gallery at Andrea@stuxgallery.com

Kathy Ruttenberg on I-D Online

An article and short interview with the artist Kathy Ruttenberg, whose exhibition, The Earth Exhales, is currently on view through May 5th.

"Make Believe
By Sarah Raphael

Be careful how you look at Kathy Ruttenberg’s art. It requires you to dislocate yourself from reality and enter her world, where she defines and defies perspective, proportion and the boundaries between man and animal. Only when you accept these rules, can you fully embrace it. Follow the white rabbit.

Studying art all over the world, in New York, Morocco and Venice, Kathy now lives and works at the top of a mountain in Woodstock. Inspired by nature, travel and anthropology, she creates clay sculptures and watercolours of bizarre imaginings that exist between dreams and nightmares. Like Snow White, Kathy lives and works among her pets and muses of sorts – rabbits, pigs and animal friends – producing her mind-bending works from life. Her new show at Stux Gallery, New York, is a collection of sculptures entitled ’The Earth Exhales’, a fitting name for the artist’s work on many cosmic levels. First finding Kathy’s work on a poster and moving image piece for the Woodstock Film Festival, i-D online dropped our logic laws at the door and tumbled down the hole to talk to the artist about muses, myths and art-at-large.

Where’s your studio and what’s the setup there? My studio /my home is a mountain top fairy tale… which is the inspiration for my work. My studio is a sacred space where I spend as much time as my schedule allows. "

Read the full article and view images here: http://i-donline.com/2012/03/make-believe/

View more images on the Stux website: www.stuxgallery.com/www/artist_gallery/64

Kathy Ruttenberg at Stux Gallery

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kathy Ruttenberg

The Earth Exhales: Ceramic Sculptures

Opening Reception: Thursday, 22^nd March, 6-8PM

March 22 – May 5, 2012

“Dogman loved Ms. Rabbit Lady so much he wanted to run deep into the
woods with her so he could eat her in privacy.” - Kathy Ruttenberg

Working with only “earth, fire and emotions,” Kathy Ruttenberg's fairytale-like ceramic sculptures create a world that is immediately captivating, but the viewer might be surprised by what’s down the rabbit hole.

Her first show at Stux Gallery, "The Earth Exhales", intersects in sensibility with works by artists such as Adriana Varejão, Arlene Shechet, and Kiki Smith, and may recall the theatricality of Mike Kelley, Louise Bourgeois and Mauricio Cattelan. Her violent and devastating visions are disturbingly peaceful, idyllic and sustainable. Erasing the boundary of the metaphorical and the literal, Ruttenberg’s world is filled with lush foliage, woodland creatures and puzzling, slightly grim yet open-ended reveries of gender relations. Men are always portrayed as animals in gentlemen's clothing, and women are always well-groomed and dressed in rounded skirts. On one hand, men are literally animal-like savages, but at the same time they are native creatures of the woodlands and the earth itself, whereas the female figures are the outsiders, if not intruders. It is hard to tell if they are men masquerading as animals, or vice versa. Death, in works such as “The Moment After”, is the stark aftermath of failed love, but also an opportunity to blossom imaginatively and become one with earth.

In “Submission”, a man with a deer’s head holds a woman in a Pieta fashion, but religious weight or any other references to non-romantic aspects of reality dissipate in Ruttenberg's wonderland. Their love story retreat behind their dead-pan, nonchalant expressions, and is instead narrated in a completely carnal and materialized manner: on the man’s back, two windows are carved out to display a mouse and a dog, and an image of a dog man eating her alive is tattooed on his skin. The occurrence of love is commemorated, and her demise and sacrifice are casually noted.

“Ladies Chaste”, a light sculpture, further complicates this discussion. The piece is composed of women alone, but the freedom from the dogman-ruled earth does not translate into relief. Literally suspended from the earth in a bright chandelier, the ladies are dressed in angelic, beribboned white dresses. The flowers that consumed their bodies in “The Moment After” are now uprooted and purely decorative. However, the women are identical, lifeless and stifled, dangling with detached joints like rack of unused puppets. Instead of imagined vegetation, they are consumed and saturated by real, artificial lighting, and have been reduced to a set of commercial light fixtures in exchange for gaining chastity. The burning bulbs echo the firing clay, and this time the agitating heat is tangible as the light casts on the viewer.

-Lucy Li

Kathy Ruttenberg is a New York based, Chicago born sculptor. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, pursuing advance studies in Morocco and at New York University. She has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally in places such as Korea, Spain and France. Ruttenberg’s work has received wide coverage in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, The Independent and The Boston Globe.

For further information please contact the gallery at Andrea@stuxgallery.com.

James Croak

Below, David Rapoport of photoandart.com does a short interview with artist, James Croak, at the opening reception for Chandelier Mistaken for God at Stux Gallery.

Ruud van Empel at Museum of Photographic Arts

Stux Gallery is pleased to announce Ruud van Empel's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Strange Beauty, at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.

"Strange Beauty features over 40 of van Empel’s digitally enhanced pieces, displaying images of perfect beauty with sinister undertones.Van Empel constructs his works through staged photography, digital enhancement and collage."

Strange Beauty opens October 12, 2012 and is on view through February 1, 2013.
We hope you have a chance to view it if you are in the San Diego area!