Sterling Ruby

The Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust has acquired the Palazzo Diedo in Venice, which will be converted into a venue for exhibitions and artist residencies as part of the new Berggruen Arts & Culture initiative. To bring the palazzo to life during its renovation and make its new role visible to the public, the institution has named Sterling Ruby its inaugural artist-in-residence. Ruby is creating a multiyear site-specific installation titled A Project in Four Acts. The first phase is a relief structure that leans across the façade of the building, on view concurrently with the 59th Biennale di Venezia. As construction commences, he will stage two exterior installations enclosing the building as it transforms. The residency will conclude with an exhibition of Ruby’s work at Palazzo Diedo in conjunction with its official opening in spring 2024.

Sterling Ruby’s relief sculpture, Hex, cuts across the facade of Palazzo Diedo, interrupting the classical architecture with a sense of precarity. Influenced by the spatial relations of Constructivism, the components balance on a vector, nodding to the prominence of assemblage in Ruby’s mobile and collage works. The title references “hex signs” — the geometric, hand-painted, star emblems appearing on the sides of Pennsylvanian Dutch barns starting in the early nineteenth century. While some interpret these symbols as protection against the supernatural, most attribute these as abstract images of celestial order, representing an agricultural interest in the stars as an expression of the annual progression of the seasons. Ruby regularly encountered these signs growing up in rural Pennsylvania, drawing upon their primary color palettes and geometric configurations for this sculpture. Composed of objects including a rusted box truck frame and recycled steel pipes from Los Angeles, along with a beaming red circle and a bright yellow flag, Hex faces outwards as a similar sort of badge for the palazzo. Decorative and distinct from the structure, it marks the start of the artist’s two year installation, A Project in Four Acts, in which Ruby will respond to the building as it is restored, reflecting the stages of transformation akin to the cycles of the seasons.