Sterling Ruby is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, nail polish drawings, various forms of collage, and hypnotic videos. His work is a form of assault on both materials and social power structures. He takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, bodybuilders, the mechanisms of warfare, cults and cult members, and urban gangs. In a 2008 review, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith called Ruby "one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century. That's only eight years, of course," she added, "but the claim may stick."

Sterling Ruby (b.1972) lives and works in Los Angeles. He was born in Bitburg, Germany to a Dutch mother and American father, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. After working in construction, he earned a BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena CA. Since 2010 Sterling Ruby is lecturing as a professor of art at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Selected exhibitions include: Selected exhibitions include: De la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space; Galleria Civica D'Arte, Moderna E Contemporanea, Turin; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas (all 2010); MoMA, New York; ICA, Philadelphia (both 2009); GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (solo) (2008-09); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (solo); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; The Drawing Center, New York (solo) (all 2008); The Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art (2007); The California Biennial, Newport Beach (2006); The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The Turin Triennial (both 2005-06); Aspen Art Museum (2005); Netherlands Media Art Institute: Montevideo, Amsterdam (both 2005).

Sources:
http://www.foxyproduction.com/artist/view/6
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Ruby

Sterling Ruby was born in 1972, on an Air force base in Germany. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and Art Center College of Design.

Though Ruby employs a variety of media and aesthetic devices in his works, his body of work is unified by a criticism and discussion of politically-charged socioeconomic topics. These often include prison conditions, and patriotism.

This surprisingly effective art maverick has drawn the attention of both private and public collections including the MoMA, LACMA, Tate Modern, and Pompidou.

He now lives and works in Los Angeles.