Lyles & King is pleased to announce a two person exhibition of work by Kathy Ruttenberg (b. 1957, Chicago IL) and Stephanie Temma Hier (b. 1992, Toronto, Canada). For this show, both artist’s practices —separated by generations—are brought together to reveal separate interdisciplinary dialogues concerning the merging of painting with the three dimensional sculpted form. Ruttenberg is based in upstate New York, and Hier lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Kathy Ruttenberg’s rich and varied career has spanned five decades. Having emerged in the fertile, anything goes 1980s arts scene of New York’s East Village, Ruttenberg’s work has evolved from an early pictorial phase to her current mastery of ceramic sculpture. On display in this exhibition is a series of works from the mid 1990s where it is possible to observe a pivotal and transitional moment connecting the then to the now, and documenting Ruttenberg’s movement from the second dimension into the third.

Much of Ruttenberg’s work on view begins with a ready made object that the artist then utilizes as multi- planed substate. Quotidian items—cigar boxes, desk drawers, slat crates, and more—present themselves as unconventional prosceniums; dioramas of framed scenes that stretch and envelop their given surfaces. Part painting, part sculpture, and part assemblage, these composite works show frozen moments that recall theatre plays and narratives glimpsed from afar. Some of the characters and objects seen are painted, while others are sculpted. Often difficult to discern where one approach stops and the other begins, their flatness gives way to form and vice versa.

Narrative and cinematic influence has informed much of Stephanie Temma Hier’s work in the show. The artist’s interests in psychoanalysis, symbolism, and what she describes as the “stringing of images together,” recalls the golden age of art-house cinema and its attention to set design and propping. She likewise presents her own selection of the quotidian as base—suitcases, grandfather clocks—but unlike Ruttenberg, Hier fabricates these foundational sculptures herself in ceramic form. Exaggerated from their real-life analogues, her objects serve as vestibules for her painted imagery and vignettes.

That Hier’s chosen objects should feel slightly out of time is considered. Nostalgia, kitsch, and longing commingle into a feeling of compressed queasiness. Seemingly unconnected forms and imagery compound into singular effect as baggage and the passing of time—the suitcase and the old clock—are just the beginning. A fish lies at the heart of the ceramic case, and painted decaying flowers surround the timepiece. As with the work of Kathy Ruttenberg on view, Hier presents a merging world where the tangible and visible commune in tandem. Where painting finds form in equal measure.

(Text by James Casey)