Sterling Ruby | Pace Wildenstein

2Traps is Los Angeles-based, multi-media artist Sterling Ruby's first exhibition with Pace Wildenstein. The show consists of two large-scale sculptures that dominate the gallery's West 22nd Street space. BUS is an actual, full-size bus "outfitted with a series of interior solitary confinement cages, speakers, sub-woofers, chrome fixtures, and exterior security doors" (from the show's press release.) I could only get myself to poke my head inside the open front door of the bus to get a glimpse of the hot, cramped, narrow, unsettling space. According to the press release, "[I]nside this muted, claustrophobic environment, notions of excess and suppression are heightened to new extremes."

The second work featured in 2Traps is PIG PEN, "a massive rectangular grid configured from a series of smaller custom-built rectangular blocks. Each individual block is comprised of four metal security doors, identical to those found on homes in urban environments." The large series of mini cages is about the same size as BUS and looks uncomfortable and nightmarish. It's disturbing to imagine these small compartments confining anyone - human or animal. Ruby's two "sculptural traps" symbolize "relics of a tarnished past, signals of a stagnating present, and warnings for an apocalyptic future." Ruby has often explored "liberation and repression" and these two works serve as "physical allegories for the powerful traps that human beings construct for themselves and metaphorical manifestations of marginal places that exist outside the past, present, or future. The sculptures reinforce society’s need for recognition and transformation."

The 37-year-old artist garnered attention with his exhibit SUPERMAX 2008 which also "explored extreme and traumatic territories and transient states." Exhibited at the Pacific Design Center, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, SUPERMAX 2008 featured Ruby's signature poured-urethan sculptures and stalagmites, nail polish paintings, spray-paint paintings, and "defaced minimalist monoliths." Also in the exhibit was a piece titled Time Machine, "a wooden cage-like structure", inscribed with: "THE PAST HAS CHEATED ME… THE PRESENT TORMENTS ME… THE FUTURE TERRIFIES ME!" Disturbing words which seem to be the basis and motivation for Ruby's fascinating works. Learn more at Pacewildenstein.com and read an interview with Ruby at wmagazine.com. Through March 20th.

PIG PEN (left), 2009-2010, BUS (right), 2010