Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian Gallery

NANCY RUBINS
Work for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, 2010
Stainless steel, stainless steel wire, aluminum
23’4″ x 37′ x 43′
and
NANCY RUBINS
Work for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome II, 2010
Stainless steel, stainless steel wire, aluminum
18’8″ x 34′ x 35″9′

Photo by Erich Koyama

Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian Gallery Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce ‘Works for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I and II,’ Nancy Rubins’ first exhibition in Los Angeles since 2001. The exhibition features two new sculptures, which were assembled on site at the gallery. July 16 – September 3, 2010]]>

July 13th, 2010 – Source: Gagosian Gallery
“We all have some history with boats, whether our grandparents came over that way or whether we used them as kids. The canoe, for example, is such a simple form, an ancient form. And it’s 100 percent figurative, designed around the human figure.”
–Nancy Rubins

A pre-eminent American sculptor, Rubins takes used or discarded industrial materials and objects and transforms them into monumental sculptures whose scale and forceful presence have an overwhelming physical impact. Rubins acts as an intermediary between the past and future states of her chosen materials, crafting them into sculptures while maintaining the discrete identities of their constituents. Her work incorporates objects of consumer culture that sometimes retain visible identifying logos, however she is most interested in their formal qualities and spatial potential than their brand. Her arrangements evoke a precarious equilibrium of objects in space, citing both the traditions of modernist American monumental sculpture as well as bricolage, which emphasize the aesthetic possibilities of quotidian objects. Using these diverse precedents as her foundations, she produces sculptures that brim with the entropic energies and forces of nature.

Boats entered Rubins’ sculptural vocabulary in 2000, which she chose for their lightness, mobility, and dynamic structure, as well as their iconographical import. Two massive sculptures, Work for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I & II, are made up of a variety of used aluminum boats including canoes, insta-boats, jon boats, and rowboats. In both, wire cable connects the boats to each other and to the steel armature, forming a weblike structure of compression and tension that recalls Buckminster Fuller’s notion of “tensegrity,” where the whole is stronger than the parts. The seemingly monochromatic metal sculptures reveal a subtle yet rich patination on closer examination, from the dents and scrapes of incidental damage to stenciled serial numbers. In a nod to Brancusi that conflates Bird in Space with Endless Column, they rise away from the floor, cantilevering toward each other in mid-flight.

Nancy Rubins was born in Naples, Texas, raised in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and studied at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore (BFA, 1974) and the University of California, Davis (MFA, 1976). Her work is included in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France. Major exhibitions include “Airplane Parts and Building, A Large Growth for San Diego,” Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1994); ARTPACE, San Antonio (1997); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1995); Miami Art Museum (1999); Fonds regional d’art contemporain de Bourgogne, France (2005); “MoMA and Airplane Parts,” SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2006); and “Big Pleasure Point,” Lincoln Center, New York (2006).