Sterling Ruby, War Was Won, 2017

Sterling Ruby

Sterling Ruby Poster "Was War Won" (unsigned), 2017

Offset lithograph poster (unsigned)

27 x 21.5

This bold and dramatic poster on card was distributed exclusively by Gagosian Gallery at the NY Art Book Fair from September 22-24, 2017, to those who visited their project room T, MoMA PS1 (see additional installation photographs)

Gagosian participated in the 2017 New York Art Book Fair, presenting a special project space conceived by Sterling Ruby, an artist in their stable. The project space examined the notion of war through a variety of publications and sculptural elements, including a newly released poster by Ruby, exclusively produced on occasion of the fair.

Ruby's poster, which reads WAS WAR WON, was displayed throughout the immersive environment of red, green, and black, and was available for free to visitors. In addition, specially fabricated structures were created to hold a uniquely curated selection of books surrounding the theme of war, which Ruby has pulled from his personal library.

Several years later, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the artist created a modified version of the same poster, using the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

This work is printed on card paper so it must ship flat, not rolled

Provenance:
Distributed by Gagosian Gallery exclusively for the NY Art Book Fair 2017, September 22-24, 2017, project room T, MoMA PS1

About Sterling Ruby:
Sterling Ruby’s work engages with issues related to autobiography, art history, and the violence and pressures within society. Employing diverse aesthetic strategies and mediums—including sculpture, drawing, collage, ceramics, painting, and video—he examines the tensions between fluidity and stasis, Expressionism and Minimalism, the abject and the pristine.

Born on Bitburg Air Base, Germany, to an American father and a Dutch mother, Ruby moved at a young age to the United States, where he grew up on a farm in southeastern Pennsylvania. There he encountered Amish quilt-making and Pennsylvania redware pottery, both of which directly inspired his initial forays into garment-making, soft sculpture, and ceramics. Ruby graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, in 1996. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, followed by an MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2005.

Living and working in Los Angeles, Ruby draws endless inspiration from the city’s physical and conceptual landscape. A subseries of the SP paintings (2007–14), the VIVIDS (2014), are electric color fields inspired by the shifting, multihued skies that he encounters on his way to the studio, while the SUBMARINE (2015) and TABLES (2015 –19) series were created from hulking industrial parts sourced nearby. Ruby’s work often deals with the ways in which acts of defacement, like urban demarcation and graffiti, can produce a painterly sublime. Both in his YARD paintings (2015–16) and in his WIDW paintings (2016–), he taps into the speed and motion of collage, incorporating bleached fabric and cardboard scraps and combining abstract color fields with fragments of studio refuse. Continually pushing the boundaries between artistic mediums, Ruby launched a ready-to-wear clothing line in 2019.
- Courtesy to Gagosian