NYAB Event - Brie Ruais “130 lbs. of Proximal Frontage”

Brie Ruais “130 lbs. of Proximal Frontage”

Mesler/Feuer

This event has ended.

Mesler/Feuer presents Brie Ruais, 130 lbs. of Proximal Frontage, in conjunction with Nicole Klagsbrun.

130 lbs. of Proximal Frontage is an amassment of physical and psychological terrains. This work fuses the proximity of other bodies with my own sense of physicality. It posits that the singular body is an impossibility and that perception is a process contingent on nearness. Shifting between submission and aggression, the pieces make space for bodies to merge and separate. The “Unzipped” works, which have shapes torn out of them, acknowledge an absence, but reject a dependency on missing parts. The torn-out shapes lay exposed on the floor, satisfied in their release, but exhausted and horizontal. These pieces have been occupied by a body and now they occupy space.

It is April 25, 2015 and I am trying to imagine my life in someone’s absence. This does not mean alone. I recall a day last summer when my friend Reuben consented to play Robert Smithson’s role in an excursion similar to the one Smithson took with Nancy Holt in “Swamp” (1969). As a destination point for the project, we chose a shack that Reuben had recently found in the woods. Instead of Holt’s 16mm viewfinder, my vision during the filming was limited to the LCD screen of a video camera. Reuben gave me verbal directives that developed from his observations of my physical response. Lacking depth perception, I struggled with the terrain, often turning the camera to the ground to see my feet in relation to the video image. As our trip progressed, we realized the inherent difficulty in finding language to fill the cognitive gap between perception and action. How do you move a body through space fraught with boundaries and stones?

The shack, I proclaimed upon seeing it, was falling in the center. The span with the least support, unkept, was returning to the ground.

Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) received her MFA from Columbia University in 2011. Working primarily with clay, Ruais makes large-scale ceramic floor and wall pieces that covet their own self-sufficiency. Often beginning with a mass of clay that equals her body weight, the scripted actions employed result in forms that speak to the movement of bodies. Her work has been exhibited at Nicole Klagsbrun, New York; Marc Selwyn Fine Arts, Los Angeles; Lefebrve & Fils Gallery, Paris; Fused Space, San Francisco; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Halsey McKay, East Hampton; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; The Horticultural Society, New York; Salon 94, New York; and The Abrons Arts Center, New York. Ruais is the recipient of The Socrates EAF Fellowship, The Shandaken Project Residency, and the Abrons Arts Center Residency. Ruais’s work will be included in the upcoming exhibition “Crafted: Objects in Flux” at the MFA Boston in August 2015. Ruais would like to thank the Anderson Ranch Arts Center for their generosity in facilitating the Unzipped pieces.

The exhibition will run concurrently with a show of works by Jon Rafman and Keren Cytter at 319 Grand Street.