February 2, 2019 – April 21, 2019

We’ve been watching the British TV show where an art dealer tries to prove through various investigations that an old famous-looking painting or drawing is really that of someone famous so that it can make its owner a lot of money – Fake or Fortune.

The sculpture Sterling Ruby makes is riding the same seesaw. He seems to make it look like not art, then pushes the gloss to the art max. Shoddy or Sharp could be the name of his show. Slick or Saturated. Crap or Art, I believe was the name of the show in the 60s. You know the story, Jasper Johns goes into the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the work by his hero Marcel Duchamp and he’s so amazed by the Large Glass he starts to feel it to get a sense of its depth, and the guard says, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to touch this crap?”

Let me give you a video example, so you can get a sense of the work currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Are you pleased with the video and thinking, this isn’t crap? I hope so. It’s The Cup.

The crap Ruby has strung from the ceiling looks like art, like an Alexander Calder mobile, but it doesn’t move; it’s welding in place. Its a dead mobile.

The artist, Sterling Ruby, has a name that makes me think of the mansion where the Nasher’s lived in Dallas and had their sculpture and art collection behind a wall-like fence and how this sculpture center is for the public a way to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And I think what a joke on the rich that Ruby has made such large works to fill their mansions and he doesn’t much care that they make fun of art.

And there are incredible moments of beauty