Sterling Ruby
Sterling Ruby: Sculpture
Nasher Sculpture Center [link]
Dallas
Totems and tombstones, massive monuments preserved under rich, goopy surfaces: it is monstrous modernism made casual plaything. Scrawled epitaphs mar the surface subverting the potentially grand, ethotic universal message into simplistic mantras. This coifed contempt –decades of epic expenditures undercut with blasé rebellion— promotes a youthful, nihilistic impulse targeting the forms of the father as the punching bag worth striking.
On this stage, exhaustively packed with works enacting heroic libidinal disillusionment, insight is asphyxiated by hubris. It reflects Ruby’s contention: excessive Oedipal angst is sexy, “rebellion” is for purchase, and capitalist hegemony is beyond irony.
images courtesy of the Nasher Sculpture Center, by Kevin Todora
