Sterling Ruby

* 1972

Sterling Ruby was born in 1972 at the U.S. Air Force base in Bitburg, Germany, to an American father and a Dutch mother. As a child, he developed a passion for drawing and learned to sew from his mother.  

In 1995, while studying at the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design in Lancaster, he visited a Bruce Nauman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, which fundamentally changed his approach to contemporary art. Nauman’s unorthodox engagement with everyday objects appeared groundbreaking to him. At the same time, Ruby recognised in Nauman’s exploration of the psychological abysses of contemporary culture themes that had occupied him since his youth in the conservative, rural regions of the United States.

In 2002, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. He relocated to Los Angeles in 2003 to enroll in an MFA program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where, from 2003 to 2005, he was also a teaching assistant to Mike Kelley.

 Ruby experienced his artistic breakthrough in the mid-2000s. Video works were central to his early practice. Over the years, he has expanded into media such as bronze, ceramics, painting, and textiles, whose diversity represents a defining aspect of Ruby’s oeuvre.

His works are sometimes abstract, but they also engage with specific subject areas such as the prison system in the United States. Formally, Ruby’s practice is rooted in the traditions of American Modernism and Minimalism. At the same time, his work examines the tension between individual expression and social constraints, incorporating ideas from posthumanist philosophy.

Ruby’s works are held in numerous renowned private and public collections. His practice has also received international recognition through solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of Modern Art in Osaka, the Belvedere in Vienna, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.