Lauren Ruth is a sculptor who stretches the scale of human anatomies and anthropomorphizes insentient objects as a playful foil to the technological surveillance state. She layers digitally printed media over slick sculptural forms to infuse bodies and objects with new agency. Giant mirrored eyeballs watch over the gallery, oversized ears eavesdrop on conversations, and tongue banners hang mute like the flags of feckless nations. As hybrids of digital and material processes, Ruth's work probes the space between autonomy and control, public and private, intimacy and alienation. An iris my be a window to the soul, but it also observes, scans as uniquely as a fingerprint, and cements our identity in a database.
Ruth's recent and upcoming exhibitions include I Forgot to Laugh... at Carlow University Art Gallery and Hello Stranger at the University Library Gallery at Sacramento State. Upcoming artist residencies include Art Farm and The Wassaic Project in 2021-22.
Ruth has exhibited at Practice Gallery, Philadelphia; Corcoran College of Art + Design; the Delaware Contemporary; Coop Gallery, Nashville; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; Root Division, San Francisco; and the University of the South, Sewanee, among others. Ruth’s artistic collaboration The Shaft, with Maiza Hixson, has performed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Soap Factory, Minneapolis; H.J. Miossi Gallery at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo; and the Koban Project, Baltimore. Ruth has been artist in residence at The Residency Project, Arteles Creative Center, ACRE Projects, Cannonball, Ox-bow, and the Recycled Artist in Residency in Philadelphia, and she has lectured and presented at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Dartmouth College, Open Engagement, and SECAC. Ruth holds a BA in Studio Art with Honors from Dartmouth College and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Ruth lives and works in Chico, CA and is Associate Professor of Art at the California State University, Chico. She teaches courses in a variety of sculptural media and techniques, including traditional, performative, and emerging practices. Ruth's pedagogy is rooted in process, experimentation, and interdisciplinary exchange, and she is current focusing on the intersection of digital and analog processes and the performative potential of the body.