Brie Ruais
Brie Ruais
Workspace Program Resident 2016
Leading up to my residency at Dieu Donné, I had just finished a body of large-scale ceramic wall sculptures and their respective floor parts. Through my sculptures, I attempt to elicit an empathic response along with a sense of knowing; such is my relationship to materiality. People often understand my work through their own visceral experiences: the squish of clay between fingers, the texture of slickrock against calloused hands, the sound of a stick drawing in the sand. My deep interest in all things haptic is how I approached my residency at Dieu Donné.
Artistic Director Paul Wong was my mentor and guide throughout the process of learning the history of paper as well as its material capabilities. We initially began working with casting pulp for its resemblance to the workability of clay. I began by sculpting free-form reliefs out of brightly colored magenta and yellow pulp- bold colors that are nearly impossible to achieve in ceramics. I was fascinated by the way the pieces warped, shriveled, and shifted as they dried and was curious to exploit those inclinations. While looking through the archives during the following studio session, Paul used the word “muscle” to describe the strength that thick applications of highly macerated cotton fiber have on a thin layer of abaca. This muscular force became the root of my experimentation with paper pulp.
I became captivated by the physical tension produced by opposing pulp recipes, as well as the formal tension that occurred between thick and thin, rough and smooth, bulky and fragile. I began piling mountains of muddy cotton pulp on freshly pulled sheets of thin abaca. As the thick pulp shrank, it pulled and buckled the abaca, creating a sheet so stressed and fragile it hardly performed its job of holding the sculpture together. Even now, I’m not sure if the abaca is holding the sculptural pulp together or the other way around.
In an effort to be thrifty with my need for large quantities of pulp, I used bins of “garbage” pulp. Garbage pulp is composed of the pulp remains from every artist project made in the wet studio. When we discovered how this thick pulp hardened like cement when dry, I began to use this to adhere rocks and sticks to the surface of the abaca. It seemed appropriate that these sculptures were, in a sense, non-sites that would forever point back to their source. My thanks to Dieu Donné, for trusting that I would find a voice in their medium of choice.
—Brie Ruais, 2016
In the Studio
About the Artist
Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) received her MFA from Columbia University in 2011 and BFA from New York University in 2004. Working primarily with clay, Ruais makes large-scale tiled floor and wall pieces that slowly reveal their process to the viewer. Often beginning with a mass of clay that equals her body weight, the scripted actions employed result in forms that speak to the movement of bodies.
Her work has been exhibited at public institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, Katzen Center at American University, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She has had solo shows with Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, NY and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Awards and residencies include The Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2018), The Sharpe Walentas Studio Program (2018), the Dieu Donne Fellowship (2016), Montello Foundation Residency (2017), Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship (2014), The Shandaken Project Residency (2014) among others. Ruais's work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Pizzuti Collection, OH; and the BurgerCollection Hong Kong. She is featured Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Clay and Ceramics, by Phaidon (2017). (Source: Albertz Benda)
For more information, please visit their website: http://brieruais.com/