Big Grid/Solo Tear
Sterling Ruby (1972–
2008 - Welded Brass
Donated by the Bloom Family in 2023
Where is it located in the garden?
More about
Sterling Ruby
Born in 1972 in Bitburg, Germany
Lives in Los Angeles
An American artist who works in a large variety of media including ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video, and textiles.
EDUCATION
Ruby received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before pursuing an MFA at the ArtCenter College of Design. He has exhibited in New York, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo, and has collaborated with designer Raf Simons for brands including Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, and Simons’s eponymous label. Ruby has also collaborated on a number of dance projects.
WHY IT’S SIGNIFICANT
• A refined balance between abstraction and emotional disruption: the grid offers structure, while the tear injects tension and ambiguity.
• Demonstrates Ruby’s blending of sculptural and architectural vocabularies with conceptual weight—grids evoke societal systems, while deformation symbolizes breakdown or resistance.
• The visible manual traces of welding and raw brass patina speak to unrest concealed beneath uniform surfaces—echoing Ruby’s broader concerns with systems, expression, urban violence, and psychological terrain.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
• Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul
• Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo
• Baltimore Museum of Art
• Bass Museum of Art, Miami
• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
• Centre Georges Pompidou
• Des Moines Art Center
• Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
• Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
• Istanbul Modern
• Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk
• Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Montreal Museum of Fine Art
• Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
ARTISTIC STYLE & APPROACH
• Part of Sterling Ruby’s “grid” series, which references architectural forms, institutional structures, and emotional rupture. The title “Solo Tear” implies both division and singularity within the strict geometry of the grid.
• Ruby's welded brass works often feature industrial aesthetics—clean forms with expressive surface textures—and challenge Minimalist austerity by revealing seams, scratches, or hand-crafted traces. Welds sometimes remain visible showing patinal variation, an intentional rejection of polished finishing.
• The scale and symmetry evoke architectural monoliths, yet the “tear” in the grid disrupts order, suggesting psychological or institutional fracture—typical of Ruby’s interest in themes of constraint versus expression, urban structure versus disorder.
• Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
• Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
• Rachofsky Collections, Dallas
• Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA
• Rubell Family Collection, Miami
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• The Seattle Art Museum
• Sender Collection, New York
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Tate, London
• True Foundation, Seattle, WA
• Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
MAJOR PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS, COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITIONS
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles – SUPERMAX 2008
•Sterling Ruby’s early grid sculptures—including works like Big Grid / Solo Tear—were featured in SUPERMAX 2008, his major solo exhibition at MOCA L.A. in 2008.
•This show integrated geometric pieces made with industrial materials (formica, spray paint, welded metal) to critique Minimalism and prison-like institutional aesthetics. It included works from Ruby’s grid series and was extensively documented in exhibition catalogs. •Edition: 4 of 5
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Sogetsu Foundation, Tokyo (2023), Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2021), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2020), Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019), Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2019), Museum of Art and Design, New York (2018), Des Moines Art Museum (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017), Winterpalais, Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2016), and Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris (2015). Selected recent group exhibitions include those at Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, Venice (2024), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2021–22), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2020), Desert X Biennial (2019) and others at The Warehouse Dallas (2024), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019), National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2018), Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais Du Louvre, Paris (2017), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2017), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2016), and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016).