Lauren Ruth is a sculptor who stretches the scale of human anatomies and anthropomorphizes insentient objects as a 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 proves 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 upcoming exhibitions in summer 2020 include I Forgot to Laugh... at the Pensacola Museum of Art and Hello Stranger at the University Library Gallery at Sacramento State. Upcoming artist residencies include the Wassaic Project and the Vermont Studio Center in 2021.
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 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 Assistant 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 focuses on process, experimentation, and interdisciplinary exchange. She is interested in the intersection of digital and analog processes and the performative potential of the body and practices a philosophy of art-like-life, life-like-art.