Ruby Neri

Ruby Neri (b. 1970, San Francisco) draws upon 20th century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. She depicts the human body as a porous instrument of pleasure, terror and everything in between; this places her within a lineage of contemporary Los Angeles-based artists which includes Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy and Charles Ray, while her penchant for hand-driven craft connects her to the Bay Area Figurative and Funk movements. The ceramic vessels that have dominated her production recently evoke both earthy tactility and psychological intimacy. Neri’s use of sprayed glazes links her ceramics to the street art she produced in the late 1990s as a member of what would become the San Francisco-based Mission School, connecting a contemporary urban art form with the archaic power of pre-historical wall-painting. The women depicted in Neri’s ceramic vessels, paintings and pastels are both fabulous and frantic, and allude associations of women on the brink of self-destruction and ecstasy: such touchstones for tragedy include Helen of Troy — the most beautiful, fair-haired woman of the ancient Mediterranean — and Marilyn Monroe. Her works are also doubles: doubly dancing or singing and yelling, doubly sculpted in the round and on the surface in vibrant hues.

In addition to recent solo exhibitions Paintings, Salon 94, New York (NY) in 2024 and Weights and Measures, Kosaku Kanechika, Tokyo (JP) in 2023, Neri’s work has been included in many group exhibitions, including 15x15: Independent 2010–2024, Independent New York (NY), Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverance in Ceramic Sculpture, The Museum of Art and Design, New York (NY) and 20, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, (CA) in 2023; Matter & Form, The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach (FL) in 2022; Lonesome Crowded West, The Geffen Contemporary at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA) in 2022; New Time: Art and Feminism in the 21st Century, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley in 2021; and The Flames: The Age of Ceramics, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (FR) in 2021.

Neri’s work is included in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (CA); Brooklyn Museum, New York (NY); de Young museum, San Francisco (CA); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (CA).