Event

Discussion: Sterling Ruby and Robert HobbsPost an Event »

San Francisco Art Institute (Main Campus)

September 14 - September 14, 2009

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800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133
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Exploring a number of contemporary aesthetic problems, Sterling Ruby utilizes a profusion of mediums to create richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, hypnotic videos, poured-urethane sculptures, inscribed Formica monoliths, nail-polish drawings, and various forms of collage. His work often invokes minimalism to point to systems and social-power structures and alludes to such subjects as body builders, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, transgender dynamics, and gang members. Venues at which he has had solo exhibitions or screenings include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Drawing Center in New York City; Bergen Kunsthall in Bergen (Norway); Marc Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles; and MoMA in New York City. Group shows include such venues as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing; the 2nd Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art; the 2006 California Biennial; and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Ruby will discuss his work with Hobbs following Hobbs's lecture on the artist. Art historian Robert Hobbs holds the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and is a visiting professor at Yale University. Before VCU, he was a lecturer at Yale and an associate professor at Cornell University. His work joins social history with literary criticism, aesthetics, and feminist and postcolonial theory. In addition to his academic work, he is a museum curator who specializes in both late modern and postmodern art. He has organized exhibitions for the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn (New York), the Drawing Center in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Hobbs’s publications include monographs on Milton Avery, Alice Aycock, Edward Hopper, Lee Krasner, Mark Lombardi, Robert Smithson, and Kara Walker. An essay on Sterling Ruby is included in a forthcoming monograph. roberthobbs.net.