EXHIBITIONS

Marina Ross: Emerald City

November 10th, 2023 through January 28th, 2024

Emerald City, a selection of oil paintings by Marina Ross in which the artist explores the connections between loss, home and belonging. Ross began mining the iconic American fairytale The Wizard of Oz (1939) in the summer of 2022, after the tragic loss of her son, as an index to cultural and personal memory. Witnessing the rise and fall of beloved performers from her youth, Ross initially investigated the impact of trauma on young, female performers such as Brittany Murphy, Britney Spears and Judy Garland. The current work takes a closer look at the impact of The Wizard of Oz on Judy Garland’s later life and as a reflection of the film’s icons such as the farmhouse, the Emerald City, and the poppies, in addition to the nature of the iconic film itself. The works in the exhibition are connected through the teal color of patination found on architectural domes and through college campuses. This color occurs naturally when metals are exposed to oxygen over an extended period of time but can also be achieved artificially through chemical alteration to achieve the highly sought after beauty of old age. The focus on architecture in the exhibition reflects the permanence, legacy, and transcendence of ubiquitous icons in our cultural history.

Matt Bodett: Of Exceptions

September 22nd through November 2nd, 2023

Challenging us to each confront our own psychology, Matt Bodett’s solo exhibition Of Exceptions utilizes a variety of media to approach each viewer with a unique opportunity to examine their own subjectivity. Drawing from contemporary psychiatric intake forms, baroque portraits of Napoleon, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings, and a variety of other culturally important artworks, Bodett extends our understanding of language and meaning-making to move beyond classically assumed linearity. This complex approach to his practice, and to the artworks presented, derive from his lived experience with schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia accompanied by a mood disorder – severe depression in Bodett’s case). This lived experience has offered Bodett a unique vantage point in a world which too often claims authority over phenomenology, psychiatry, and culture. Offering us a chance to explore the exceptions, Bodett’s work is deeply personal, historically challenging, and poetically relevant.

Ricardo Mondragon: Musica Universalis

June 9th through September 3rd, 2023

Our cosmos is built on musical dimensions, audible and inaudible. Nature interweaves harmonic relationships via waves manifesting in phenomena such as brainwaves, ripples of clouds, planetary orbits, atoms, circadian rhythms, a flock of birds, a school of fish, light, spacetime, and everything else. Crest by crest and trough under trough, waves harmonize, creating beautiful anatomies. The body of work presented at Artruss Gallery is a compendium of harmonic waves modulated into sculptural work, along with prints depicting particles and vibrations. While making this work, it has become more evident that music is the path to cosmic knowledge.

Dabin Ahn: 1st Dibs

April 14th through May 26th, 2023

1stDibs, the painter and sculptor’s first solo show with the gallery. The works on view explore finding emotion in inanimate objects, specifically decorative figurines. Growing up surrounded by his mother’s collection of porcelain dinnerware, Ahn became interested in the concept of these objects’ simultaneous permanence and fragility. Left untouched they can last forever, yet they easily shatter. The porcelain figurines he captures encompass the same brittle delicacy. Ahn’s inspiration stems from images of vintage figurines on auction websites. Using these photos as a jumping off point, he creates a narrative for each one. By distorting the original images and adding such things as a reflection in the eye or a tear down a face, he instills emotions in the objects—emotions that viewers can relate to on a deeply personal level. “More than anything else, the eyes reveal who a person truly is. In1stDibs, Ahn encourages his viewers to consider how these works capture their own personal narratives.

Thomas Masters: Into The Void

October 27th through December 4th, 2022

Inaugural Exhibition:

Alexander Richard Wilson, Melissa Leandro, Jacqueline Surdell, Titus Wonsey, Jeffly Gabriela Molina, Patty Carroll, Dabin Ahn, and Zachary Weber

September 22nd through October 24th, 2022