Artist: Brie Ruais
Exhibition title: Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017
Venue: COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada
Date: January 26 – February 24, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and COOPER COLE, Toronto
COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition from Brie Ruais.
This marks Ruais‘ first solo exhibition in Canada.
What follows is a fictional conversation between the artist and White Sands Ranger.
Follow the trail markers; look carefully for the next trail marker before continuing. If you cannot see the next marker because of blowing sand or if a marker is down, turn back.
Do not rely on your footprints to return to your car as they may be erased by the wind in a matter of minutes.
Landscape Painting with 130lbs of Clay (Dark Sky Law), 130lbs seems particularly generated by the silent movement of the body at night.
It’s like someone feeling their way around a familiar room in the dark.
How do the manual processes used in your work increase the formal and conceptual content?
Working manually allows for me and my work to occupy the same moment; to develop meaning through my relationship with material.
How do you select the material you work with?
I gravitate towards formless materials. Form then arises from a collaborative compromise of movement and material limitation. Clay has a relationship to the earth and the body, elegantly expressed by the term “mother earth”.
We are surrounded by an active missile range. From time to time, debris from missile tests fall onto the dunes. Don’t touch any strange objects.
Paper pulp has a connection to both the natural and social worlds. It’s ubiquity and ease of use has opened up new freedoms.
What are these freedoms?
The circumstances through which I fell in love with pulp created the freedom, and now the two are intertwined. I was recently in a remote corner of the Nevada desert at the Montello Foundation, entirely alone and disconnected. In search of a raw material for sculpting, I made use of my paper trash and kitchen blender. I worked without witness, without expectation, without the shade that casts doubts. I worked under the sun.
A form that resonates through the paper pulp pieces and clay works like Scraped Body Void, 130lbs, is the open vessel, passage, or hole.
I’m continually fascinated by holes – by how their presence represents an absence. They’re like a death; representing a life that continues to resonate even after death, both absent and present at the same time. I think of holes as fluid spaces, where we move, always in a state of becoming, always in transit, always lost, always seeking, always passing through.
DON’T RELY ON GPS TO FIND YOUR WAY
The military testing nearby can disrupt the satellite signals for hours.
The parts are so orderly, screwed onto the wall quite visibly with screws.
Civilization’s approach to tackling the “expansive” is usually by breaking it down with a grid. Technology goes square when faced with a critical mass of people and of land.
Due to the explosive smacking sounds, one realizes the enormous physical effort you are putting into your work.
I’m trying to put the laboring, traumatized, vulnerable body into the work; trying to move beyond verbal language.
Wandering can endanger your life and make finding you more difficult. If you become lost, sit at the top of a dune.
Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) received her BFA from New York University, and her MFA from Columbia University in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Katzen Center at American University, Washington, DC; Arsenal, Montreal; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include Nicole Klagsbrun, NY; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Mesler/Feuer, NY; Lefebvre & Fils, Paris. Group exhibitions include Maccarone, Sperone Westwater and Rachel Uffner in NY; Night Gallery and Marc Selwyn Fine Arts in Los Angeles, September gallery in Hudson, NY, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels among others. Ruais is the recipient of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, the Dieu Donne Fellowship, Montello Foundation Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, The Shandaken Project Residency among others. Her work is featured in Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Clay and Ceramics, by Phaidon (Fall 2017). She will have a solo exhibition this spring at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Ruais currently lives and works in Brooklyn, USA.
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Attempting to Hold the Landscape 2016-2017, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: Me TOO, 2018, Porcelain, glaze, 13.5″ X 13″ X 9.5″, 34.29cm X 33.02cm X 24.13cm
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: Grab Back, 2018, 18″ X 9″ X 8″, 45.72cm X 22.86cm X 20.32cm
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: I Decide What Goes Inside, 2018, Porcelain, glaze, 17″ X 12.5″ X 12″, 43.18cm X 31.75cm X 30.48cm
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: Me Too, 2018, Porcelain, glaze, 19″ X 6.5″ X 7″, 48.26cm X 16.51cm X 17.78cm
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: My Body My Choice, 2018, Porcelain, glaze, 22″ X 10″ X 10″, 55.88cm X 25.4cm X 25.4cm
Brie Ruais, Affirmation Pot: Nasty Womyn, 2018, Porcelain, glaze, 21″ X 13″ X 12″, 53.34cm X 33.02cm X 30.48cm
Brie Ruais, Gutted, 2017, Paper pulp, fibrous roots, 18″ X 17″ X 6″, 45.72cm X 43.18cm X 15.24cm
Brie Ruais, Holding the center, 2017, Paper pulp, wintered organics from the artist’s garden, 27″ X 23″ X 4″, 68.58cm X 58.42cm X 10.16cm
Brie Ruais, Spreading Out from Center in Five Directions (Left Arm, Left Leg, Right Arm, Right Leg), 130lbs, 2016, Fired clay, glaze, hardware, 59″ X 55″ X 3.5″, 149.86cm X 139.7cm X 8.89cm
Brie Ruais, Cornered, 125lbs, 2016, Glazed ceramic, hardware, 57″ X 19.5″, 144.78cm X 49.53cm
Brie Ruais, Star I Made by Punching the Sky (4), 2018, Fired clay, glaze, 11.5″ X 10″ X 1.3″, 29.21cm X 25.4cm X 3.3cm
Brie Ruais, Star I Made by Punching the Sky (5), 2018, Fired clay, glaze, 6″ X 8″ X 1.3″, 15.24cm X 20.32cm X 3.3cm
Brie Ruais, Star I Made by Punching the Sky (7), 2018, Fired clay, gaze, 10.5″ X 9.8″ X 1.4″, 26.67cm X 24.89cm X 3.56cm
Brie Ruais, Landscape Painting with 130lbs of Clay (Dark Sky Law), 130lbs (AKA Black Horizon), 2016, Glazed ceramic, hardware, 34″ X 69″, 86.36cm X 175.26cm
Brie Ruais, Scalped, 2017, Paper pulp, horse hair, 18″ X 17.5″ X 2.5″, 45.72cm X 44.45cm X 6.35cm