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Jessica Silverman Gallery

December 11 - January 31, 2010

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488 Ellis Street San Francisco, CA 94102
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Cold, Hard and Wet Conrad Ruiz, Multiple Peaks, 80 × 80 Inches, Watercolor on canvas, 2009
Opening reception: December 11, 7-10pm Silverman Gallery is pleased to present Conrad Ruiz: Cold, Hard and Wet an exhibition of new paintings by Conrad Ruiz from December 11, 2009 - January 30, 2010 The artist’s first solo show features large-scale watercolor paintings inspired by the epic scope of Hollywood cinema and history painting. Drawing on a disparate range of references, from Gericault and Delacroix to James Cameron, Ruiz’s expansive canvases unfold as kinetic and often explosive compositions, which capture moments of collective euphoria. Through these fantastical and excessive tableaux, Ruiz explores notions of class, race and masculinity that persist through popular lexicons. This particular body of work draws from the questing idioms of video games (such as Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda) to produce winter-themed landscapes that engage recent historical ruptures, including the stock market crash and economic downturn. Populated with teams of supernatural, ridiculously powerful men, these canvases interrogate lingering power structures, homosocial bonding, and class stratification as they are encoded onto visual idioms. Conrad Ruiz lives and works in Los Angeles. His work is part of the Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive permanent Collection and is currently on view in the Material Witness exhibition through December 20th.