Brie Ruais interviewed on Abstract Room

April 10, 2018

Brie Ruais was interviewed by Anne-Valérie Kirmann on Abstract Room.

Could you please introduce us to your artistic practice?

I am working through movement, forms, and material to navigate an unbalanced, unpredictable world. Through sculptures made on the scale of the body, I make maps of various routes and perform my modes of navigation in clay.

You work with clay – that originates from earth – and you use your body weight of material for each of your piece. Is it a mean to desecrate art, to put it at the same level as humanity?

My work is largely about the experience of being human, I think most art is. I think clay is sacred in a sense because it comes from the earth. I use it as my main material to embody the physical and metaphysical relationship we have to our various environments

In some of your recent 2017 pieces, continuity is lost, the work being spread out in different fragments. The word “broken” is used in the titles of those works. What was your intent?

Broken Ground Red and Broken Ground White were both made by spreading the clay radially outward from the center, as I do with many pieces. I made them after some time spent in the Nevada desert, where rainfall soaks the parched dirt and then dries into cracked desiccated patterns common to arid playas. These are the first pieces where I moved away from using the cut line as separation method. The title is a play on words- it refers to the cracked earth of a parched desert and a shift, or “groundbreaking” within my practice. When clay (or dirt) covers a large surface area, it does not shrink in one direction, it shrinks and separates into fragments. I wanted these works to speak to this natural ability of the clay to literally pull itself apart as it dries.

You are currently preparing a show at Night Gallery in LA. In which direction are you working for this show?

This body of work started from the feeling that things are falling apart, that there’s a darkness and uncertainty that is resonating now. The center is not holding. To borrow from Joan Didion, we don’t know the rules of the game we are playing, and maybe we’ve stopped believing in rules anyway. In thinking about this, I created a series of movements for making the pieces, but the resulting forms seem to speak to more than just the actions that made them. They look like a system of formal signs or symbols that is evolving. The surfaces are evolving too: they’re highly textured; charred, dry, scaly, and bone-like; and I’m using more color with pigmented clay and layered glazes.

What are your interests in the field of contemporary creation?

I’ve been looking at a lot of artists who are drawing on their relationships to the natural world and using organic materials or phenomenological processes to produce their work like Letha Wilson, Sam Falls, Martha Tuttle. I also look at work that directly or indirectly addresses the body of the maker like Andrea Zittel, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Janine Antoni, and I’m revisiting Michelle Stuart’s work.

– Anne-Valérie Kirmann

To see the full post please visit Abstract Room.

For more information about Brie Ruais please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com
+1.416.531.8000

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	1 year	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.

Cookie	Duration	Description
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CONSENT	16 years 9 months 23 days 2 hours	No description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	1 year	No description
_gat_gtag_UA_135534658_1	1 minute	No description