Ruby Sky Stiler: Sun Breaker: Locust Projects

Ruby Sky Stiler's solo exhibition Ruby Sky Stiler: Sun Breaker at Locust Projects, Miami, FL.

The institution's press release follows:

Locust Projects is pleased to present Sun Breaker, a new installation by New York-based artist Ruby Sky Stiler. For her first solo show in Miami, Stiler expands on her sculptural engagement with the female form and its manifestation in the varied dialects of twentieth century abstraction. Through the application of at-hand and unfinished building materials, the artist explores the tropical modernist architecture that is native to Miami as a site of sculptural opportunity. With suspended laser-cut screens and wall-mounted plaster reliefs inspired loosely by the city’s vernacular style, Stiler’s installation blocks out new spaces-within-a-space in the main gallery. 

The installation’s title, Sun Breaker, refers to brise soleil, a common architectural element in the tropics—a perforated surface that is both decorative and utilitarian—that allows for the free flow of light and air through a building’s façade. Likewise, Stiler’s suspended MDF screens create a structure that the viewer looks both at and through, while the compositions within her cast plaster wall reliefs are illuminated only when light rakes across their ghostly surfaces. Both elements incorporate the reduced palette and scale inherent to stock 4’ x 8’ construction materials—which allows for a focused look at the pared down forms. Through the duality of everyday materials and rigorous form, the expandable and modular installation blurs the line between high art and functional design.

The installation is accompanied by a new animation that Stiler created as she generated the brise soleil patterns. Through the “lens” of a flat bed scanner, we see the artist intuitively arranging cut paper shapes into compositions, as if working in a private sketchbook. Making a connection between the light of the scanner and the punctuated sunlight streaming through patterned walls, Stiler compiled the scans into an animation. A loose narrative emerges at points in the animation that incorporate the female figure, an ongoing theme in the artists practice.