Artwork by Brooklyn-based artist Esther Ruiz ’11 is being featured in a solo exhibition titled Uncharted at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. The show debuts the first freestanding and largest to date sculpture in Ruiz’s Beacon series, which features hand-carved wooden forms, outfitted with bands of neon and embedded with an assortment of gemstones, organic matter, and found objects.
Ruiz’s work is influenced by science fiction landscapes and geometry. The artist received a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Rhodes in 2011 and moved to Brooklyn, NY, after graduation to pursue a career in art. Her work has been reviewed in publications including Art News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
For Unchartered, Ruiz has created COMMU-1 Navigational Beacon, and according to a news release: “Standing at nearly six feet tall, COMMU-1 is a human-scaled capsule described by the artist as ‘a chamber for contemplation.’ Comprised of hinged halves, the pod’s life force—wires, transformers, implanted crystals, terrestrial samples—is exposed to showcase the vessel’s power supply. Sewn to the fuselage’s exterior with steel wire are three large abalone shells surrounded by Phosphor-coated cobalt glass tubes filled with neon. At its core, COMMU-1 conjures the spirit of exploration and meditation, sharing with the other Beacons the manifestation of Ruiz’s intuition—a collision of the earthly and the boundless.”