July 29 – August 20, 2017
Halsey McKay is thrilled to present its second exhibition with Brie Ruais. Her new ceramic sculptures embody a transition from action to outcome begun with a list of limitations. These controls determine the weight of material, the action, the time, and the basic shape of her works. She then confronts the allotted clay with her body in a highly physical process that involves kneeling, kicking, spreading, scraping, and skimming. The body operates as a conduit for receiving and communicating messages that escape the limitations of our material and social reality. By working with the equivalent of her body weight in clay, she creates a situation where the material pushes back, resists, challenges, and responds to her actions. As a result, clay and body collapse as subject and material merge. Clay has the ability to address conceptions of the internal body and the body of the earth; it is in this space that her work reflects on the history of shared repression and exploitation of the environment. These new works simultaneously look inward towards primordial movement, outward towards the land, and center on the undeniability of traumatized bodies.
