Hot on the heals of his exhibition at MAMO in Marseille, Sterling Ruby will open THE MOUNTAIN at Gagosian Gstaad.
In dialogue with the Romantic tradition of the sublime, Ruby will explore themes of germination, birth, growth, and decay, drawing upon the physical and metaphysical cycles of life. Intimately rooted in the artist’s time in California’s Eastern Sierras, these sculptures and paintings are deeply attuned to environmental transformation. On view from July 11th through September 7th, the presentation will extend beyond the gallery’s walls, with works installed at locations throughout the historic alpine town of Gstaad.
For the past two years the snowfall has been epic. At the summit of the mountain’s 11,059-foot peak, this season’s snowfall reached a base depth of 154 inches. Because of this, the surrounding lakes have been full of water, the spring flowers blossomed, the summer berries were ripe, and the pine cones that once lay dormant on the ground gave way to new saplings of conifers. I watched this transition in awe of the universal life cycle: that everything and everyone must pass through stages of unworldly contemplation only to be absorbed back into the ground.
Sterling Ruby, , Mammoth Mountain, California, April 2025
In the gallery’s main entry, Ruby presents a monolithic wood burl sculpture adorned with puddled bronze tears. Composed into a naturalist altar, this intricate form can be attributed to the tree’s long history of stress and its struggle to cope with infection. Crying Slab (2025) channels Ruby’s interest in myth and mutation while echoing Surrealist animism to embody themes of trauma, resilience, fragility, and endurance. Incorporating found organic materials with sculpted elements via assemblage and direct casting, this body of work reflects a lineage of Post-Minimalist and Arte Povera strategies, where raw materials retain traces of their past lives.
New paintings on paper include collaged photos produced from the artist’s mountainous surroundings. Akin to landscape paintings, these works (all 2025) from the DRFTRS series (2013–) combine gestural watercolor and gouache with fragments of tree bark, berries, pine cones, and fallen birds’ nests, reimagining botanical documentation through contemporary abstraction. This practice of lifting directly from one’s surroundings has prompted Ruby to plant extensive gardens at his studio in Vernon, far from the wilderness of Mammoth. The garden provides a source for photography and “live” burnouts (an ephemeral type of metal casting with organic material), but also endless entries into the microcosms of cyclical growth that exist in the natural world.
Cast from lumber salvaged from the artist’s family barn, the totemic Sobbing Hippy sculpture (2025) continues to mine Ruby’s youth in rural Pennsylvania. This interplay between autobiography, raw materials, and elaborate processes of production, has long been central to his practice. Characterized by braids, flowers, eyes, and appendages, the upright figure also refers to trail markers found in remote areas, vernacular objects that function as both practical guides and repositories of collective memory, bearing scars and inscriptions from previous travelers.
An extension of his Basin Theology works (2009–), Canoe / Lorelei (2025) initiates a new series of glazed ceramic sculpture. Composed of fragments from failed previous kiln firings, it exemplifies Ruby’s creative reuse and archeological layering. This act of building with remnants echoes Robert Rauschenberg’s inclusion of found materials in his Combines, suggesting that every fragment contains a latent narrative or mnemonic trace. Shaped like an open boat with oars, Canoe / Lorelei draws inspiration from canoe burials—an ancient funerary rite practiced by coastal cultures—suggesting both a vessel of passage and a metaphor for impermanence and transcendence.
An ensemble of tactilely scaled objects accompanies the exhibition both inside the gallery and peppered throughout the town of Gstaad. Flowers and nuts cast in bronze, left bound by the gating and spouts integral to the pouring process; salt-soaked, podlike skull berries made of clay; blue-flamed candles balancing on weathered wood mallets; glowing, molten ashtrays; and imagined cryptozoological specimens realized in limestone and ceramic explicitly combine the artifact and the industrial.
STERLING RUBY THE MOUNTAIN July 11th–September 7th, 2025 Gagosian Gstaad
Opening reception: Friday, July 11th, 11AM–6PM
About the artist
Sterling Ruby’s multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, painting, drawing, collage, ceramics, video, and fashion. Through these varied forms, he explores themes of autobiography, art history, and the social pressures that shape contemporary life. His work navigates tensions between opposing forces—fluidity and stasis, Expressionism and Minimalism, the abject and the pristine.
Born on Bitburg Air Base in Germany to an American father and Dutch mother, Ruby moved to southeastern Pennsylvania as a child, where he was influenced by Amish quilt-making and Pennsylvania redware pottery. These early encounters informed his early experiments with textiles, soft sculpture, and ceramics. He studied at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design (1996), earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002), and completed an MFA at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena (2005).
Now based in Los Angeles, Ruby draws inspiration from the city’s industrial and atmospheric landscapes. His VIVIDS series (2014), part of the earlier SP paintings (2007–14), channels the shifting hues of LA skies, while SUBMARINE (2015) and TABLES (2015–19) incorporate salvaged industrial materials. Ruby often explores defacement—urban graffiti, marks, and scrawls—as a form of painterly expression. His YARD (2015–16) and WIDW (2016–) paintings use bleached fabrics, cardboard, and studio scraps to create dynamic collages that blur the line between order and entropy. In 2019, Ruby expanded his practice into fashion, launching a ready-to-wear clothing line that continues his exploration of material, form, and cultural residue.
