Sterling Ruby - Contemporary Art Part I New York Monday, November 7, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles

  • Catalogue Essay

    Among the luminaries of a new generation of contemporary artists, Sterling Ruby has established his unique artistic and innovative signature in relatively short time. Ruby’s versatile and impressive practice ranges from sculpture to ceramic, to video art, to large-scale graffitied canvases. Connecting his fascination with art historical movements to contemporary social structures, Ruby creates anachronistic artwork with pounding immediacy. Having received widespread critical acclaim, Ruby has been named “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century.” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Sterling Ruby,” New York Times, March 21, 2008).

    The present lot, SP40, 2008 illustrates how well deserved these accolades are and demonstrates the artist’s fascination with revealing the grittiness
    belying our everyday superficial experience. Part of the larger Spectrum Ripper series, which marked his first UK solo exhibition in 2008., SP40, 2008,
    focuses on deconstructing Minimalist form, in particular the grid as an ideal of geometry. Utilizing a Day-glo pink and orange palette on a dark canvas,
    Ruby finds a way of uncovering what maybe the psychic underpinnings of a sanitized aesthetics. With SP40, 2008, Ruby rebels against a visual hegemony
    of minimalist art and its politics through raw scratching and visibly manmade textural qualities, posing a uniquely raw and visceral vision.

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION

44

SP40

2008
spray paint on canvas
96 x 82 in. (243.8 x 208.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated “‘SP40’ SR.08” on the reverse.

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $326,500

Contemporary Art Part I

7 November 2011
New York