NYAB Event - Alan Ruiz “Precincts”

Alan Ruiz “Precincts”

The West 10th Street Window

This event has ended.

Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings presents Alan Ruiz, Precincts.

Alan Ruiz’s Precincts explores the boundaries of the West 10th Window by confronting the space of the display as a volume, as opposed to a container, through a series of customized vertical white aluminum sheets. Precincts simultaneously references the surrounding neighborhood: the 6th Precinct of the New York Police Department (which is immediately adjacent to the West 10th Window) and the shopping district on Bleecker Street. Rather than displaying an object for consumption, Ruiz inverts the traditional storefront window display by redirecting the viewer’s gaze through and out of the window. The white aluminum sheets fill the volume of the space, but are cut in such a way to create a visual passageway that redirects the viewer’s gaze towards the police precinct and neighboring private property. As such, Precincts warrants a kind of physicalized act of looking that subverts the notion of consumption while referencing surveillance via the viewer’s redirected gaze. Precincts relates to Ruiz’s wider artistic practice of exploring the tensions between standardized materials and customization, as well as the relationship between architecture and power, particularly as it relates to the delineation and control of public and private space.

Alan Ruiz is an artist living and working in New York City. Alan’s work addresses the intersection of institutional critique, architectural discourse, and urban policy. He received an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT, and a BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and is a current participant in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His work has been shown widely, including in exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Y Gallery, and Johannes Vogt Gallery in New York, among others. His work has also been shown abroad at the Tape Modern in Berlin, Germany, and Horatio Jr. in London UK. He has participated in residencies and development programs with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Art & Law Program at Fordham Law School, and the Yale Norfolk Summer School for Art and Music. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, as well as a Visiting Lecturer in the Visual Studies Department of Eugene Lang College, at The New School. Ruiz will be this semester’s Artist in Residence with the Youth Insights Program at the Whitney Museum.