EXHIBITION IMAGES | WORKS | PRESS RELEASE

July 29 – August 20, 2017 
79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton | info@halseymckay.com | 631. 604. 5770
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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.

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Brie Ruais was born in Southern California and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from New York University, and her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Abrons Art Center, NY; American University Museum, Washington, DC; Arsenal, Montreal; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include Cooper Cole, Toronto; Mesler/Feuer, NY; Nicole Klagsbrun, NY; Lefebrve & Fils, Paris. Group exhibitions include Maccarone, Jack Tilton, Sperone Westwater and Rachel Uffner in NY; Night Gallery and Marc Selwyn Fine Arts in Los Angeles and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels among others. Ruais is the recipient of Dieu Donne Fellowship, Montello Foundation Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, The Shandaken Project Residency, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and Residency, among others. Her work is featured in Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Clay and Ceramics, by Phaidon (Fall 2017).
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