Ruby Neri: Wall Works
David Kordansky Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Ruby Neri, on view from September 17 through October 22, 2022. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 17 from 6 to 8 PM.
Ruby Neri is a Los Angeles-based artist who draws upon twentieth century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. In recent years, Neri has become increasingly recognized for floor-based vessels and sculptures featuring figurative female forms. Here, she pushes the limits of the ceramic medium that has been at the center of her practice for much of the last decade, engaging in new experiments. For this exhibition, her fifth solo presentation with David Kordansky Gallery, these include new wall-based ceramic sculptures and a major bronze sculpture鈥攁n eight-foot-tall form that represents the artist鈥檚 first time working with the medium.
Related to Neri鈥檚 ongoing interest in the form of the female figure, the narrative thread uniting these works is the full expression of human emotion: pleasure, terror, ambivalence, and joy. The wall sculptures range widely in their renderings of a bawdy feminist life force and exude frenetic energy. In one composition, a woman riding a white horse suspiciously glances backward toward a small, nude figure fiercely gripping at her hair. Here, the dramatic line work is a literal translation of Neri鈥檚 previous experience spray painting graffiti onto buildings鈥攏ow transferred onto textured clay surfaces that swirl in bursts of color and tone. In another setting, a trio of women in white and yellow heels kick outward in repetitive motions, extending their hands to the viewer in an invitation that feels both generous and sinister.
Several of the new sculptures are composed of various bodies that vary in size, emerging from a singular form at the center of the composition. The relationships between the figures provide crucial insights into Neri鈥檚 world, both literally and metaphorically, and can alternately be read as evocations of dynamic inner forces or symbolic manifestations of archetypal entities. Expressed consistently throughout this new group of works is a timeless, gritty, feminist energy and a series of conflicting human expressions that feels specifically relevant to the out-of-control nature of contemporary existence. Structurally, the embraces between the figures hold the works together and account for much of their formal and technical bravura.
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David Kordansky Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Ruby Neri, on view from September 17 through October 22, 2022. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 17 from 6 to 8 PM.
Ruby Neri is a Los Angeles-based artist who draws upon twentieth century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. In recent years, Neri has become increasingly recognized for floor-based vessels and sculptures featuring figurative female forms. Here, she pushes the limits of the ceramic medium that has been at the center of her practice for much of the last decade, engaging in new experiments. For this exhibition, her fifth solo presentation with David Kordansky Gallery, these include new wall-based ceramic sculptures and a major bronze sculpture鈥攁n eight-foot-tall form that represents the artist鈥檚 first time working with the medium.
Related to Neri鈥檚 ongoing interest in the form of the female figure, the narrative thread uniting these works is the full expression of human emotion: pleasure, terror, ambivalence, and joy. The wall sculptures range widely in their renderings of a bawdy feminist life force and exude frenetic energy. In one composition, a woman riding a white horse suspiciously glances backward toward a small, nude figure fiercely gripping at her hair. Here, the dramatic line work is a literal translation of Neri鈥檚 previous experience spray painting graffiti onto buildings鈥攏ow transferred onto textured clay surfaces that swirl in bursts of color and tone. In another setting, a trio of women in white and yellow heels kick outward in repetitive motions, extending their hands to the viewer in an invitation that feels both generous and sinister.
Several of the new sculptures are composed of various bodies that vary in size, emerging from a singular form at the center of the composition. The relationships between the figures provide crucial insights into Neri鈥檚 world, both literally and metaphorically, and can alternately be read as evocations of dynamic inner forces or symbolic manifestations of archetypal entities. Expressed consistently throughout this new group of works is a timeless, gritty, feminist energy and a series of conflicting human expressions that feels specifically relevant to the out-of-control nature of contemporary existence. Structurally, the embraces between the figures hold the works together and account for much of their formal and technical bravura.
Artists on show
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David Kordansky Gallery Los Angeles is presenting Wall Works, an exhibition of new works by Ruby Neri, on view from September 17 through October 22, 2022.
On view in Los Angeles until October 22.
Ruby Neri is a Los Angeles-based artist who draws upon twentieth-century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes.