ERIC RUBY

Project Space

Exhibition Dates:
July 22 - September 2, 2022

Opening Reception:
Friday, July 22, 2022, 5:00-9:00pm

Artist Talk:
Saturday, July 23 @ 11:00am

With great excitement, Rivalry Projects is sharing a new exhibition with Eric Ruby, Skies the Limit. The exhibition will be on view in our Project Space from July 22-September 2, 2022 in tandem with Susan Metrican: Married to the Ground. Both exhibitions will have an opening reception on Friday, July 22, 2022 from 5:00-9:00pm. Ruby and Metrican will both be present for the opening reception and will each give an artist talk on Saturday, July 23, 2022 from 11:00 AM-12:00pm. 

Eric Ruby is a prolific image-maker, producing thousands of photographs each year. For this exhibition, we’ve curated images from 2017-2018. Drawn from his vast archive, Skies the Limit presents photographs Ruby has created from a family funeral in Connecticut, trips to Minnesota, Alaska, and California which exude a mysticism that underscores the artist’s interest in people and spaces within divestment movements, such as Back-to-the-Land.

Skies the Limit mirrors Ruby’s own nomadic practice of moving and photographing in a stream of consciousness style which in part examines the death of counterculture and a utopian ideal. Photographs within this exhibit are drawn from everyday life, amassing vignettes of normalcy and the quotidian. Tied to rhythms of wanderlust and repetition, Ruby’s photographs unfurl as a road trip haiku. His photographs possess Ruby’s imagistic practice that operates in contrast to the dream of “dropping out” as envisioned by earlier generations and held onto today as a cultural relic, while also maintaining an aura of hopefulness and appeal. 

Ruby’s encounters with friends within the Lost Coast led him to the relics of Albert Saijo. Saijo was a Japanese-American Beat Poet (1926-2011). He lived a lyrical existence of wanderlust and Buddhism, and influenced writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, and Gary Snyder, setting the countercultural tone for the latter half of the twentieth-century. 

Drawing inspiration from his personal belongings, including Saijo’s bookcase, Ruby’s photographs within this exhibit examine a detachment from mainstream society, cultivating an aura of remoteness, while unpacking the illusion of being able to remove one’s self from the world. A 2018 photograph by Ruby considers Saijo’s bookcase. Constructed from rough wood and stacked full of disintegrating volumes it offers a glimpse into the recluse’s residence, inviting us into his space to examine the book’s spines and consider a monastic existence. A koinobori carp-streamer hangs on the bookcase’s outer flank, pointing to Saijo’s Japanese heritage and the hermetic pursuit of unfettered winds just beyond our grasp. 

Ruby’s photographs within Skies the Limit push against the traditional conceit of the medium as a faithful representation of life, instead offering up carefully cultivated fictions. The title of this exhibit is shared with a photobook published by the artist and is also an homage to Ruby’s friend, Skye, who “...grew this pot strain that was un-smokable, [and] gave everyone tremendous anxiety in the mind and body, we named it Skies The Limit. Seemed fitting as a metaphor.” These images operate as mirrors of our own desires, anxieties, and fears. This body of work also touches upon the supernatural and remnants of a psychedelic awakening that colored the social revolutions of the twentieth century in America.

WORKS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Eric Ruby (b. Manchester, CT) is a photographer living in Berkeley, California. He received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2009, and his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014.