With Cités voraces, Jérôme Ruby transforms the crests and symbols of the world’s great cities in surrealistic elegies. These city-states constitute the temple of a new theology, one of corporate power, where multinationals, strategists of invisible wars, have replaced sacred princes and antique gods. The artist multiplies the mythological, artistic and contemporary references, passing through History, politics and current events.
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Grazing the «bande dessinée» genre, Ruby’s drawings oscillate between a refined aesthetic and a dreamlike illustration. The ensemble of drawings, executed with ballpoint pen and pencil crayon, stand beside a collection of objects suggesting the confrontation of man and nature, as much as the artist’s struggle against the dictatorship of the new. These intimate and highly charged works are marked by the ambiguity of criticism and playfulness, of strangeness and kitsch, without ever turning into political caricature.
(from the galerie Donald Browne press release)
galerie Donald Browne
space 528
Jérôme Ruby
Cites Voraces
August 28th to October 2nd, 2010
