Ruby Neri (b. 1970, San Francisco) draws upon twentieth-century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. She depicts the human body as a porous instrument of pleasure, terror, and everything in between; this places her within a lineage of recent Los Angeles-based artists that includes Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, while her penchant for hand-driven craft connects her to the Bay Area Figurative and Funk movements. The ceramic vessels that have dominated Neri's production recently evoke both earthy tactility and psychological intimacy. Neri’s use of sprayed glazes links her ceramics to the street art she produced in the late 1990s as a member of what would become the San Francisco-based Mission School, connecting a contemporary urban art form with the archaic power of pre-historical wall-painting and object-making.
In 2018, Neri was the subject of a two-person exhibition, Alicia McCarthy and Ruby Neri / MATRIX 270, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), California. Recent group shows include The Flames: The Age of Ceramics, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2021–2022); New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, BAMPFA, California (2021); The Domestic Plane: New Perspectives on Tabletop Art Objects, Objects Like Us, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2018); From Funk to Punk, Left Coast Ceramics, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York (2017); Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California, Oakland Museum of California and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2014); Energy That is All Around: Mission School, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York (2014); Busted, High Line, New York (2013); and Made in L.A. 2012, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012). Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; BAMPFA, California; Brooklyn Museum, New York; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Neri lives and works in Los Angeles.
Ruby Neri
Flowers, 2021
ceramic with glaze
45 x 36 x 45 inches
(114.3 x 91.4 x 114.3 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled, 2020
ceramic with glaze
23 x 22 x 24 inches
(58.4 x 55.9 x 61 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled, 2019
pastel on paper
47 1/2 x 41 inches
(120.7 x 104.1 cm)
framed:
51 1/2 x 45 x 1 1/2 inches
(130.8 x 114.3 x 3.8 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled, 2019
ceramic with glaze
79 x 54 x 29 inches
(200.7 x 137.2 x 73.7 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled (Traditional Pot with White on White), 2017
ceramic with glaze
32 1/2 x 28 x 26 inches
(82.6 x 71.1 x 66 cm)
Ruby Neri
Women Playing with Dolls, 2017
ceramic with glaze
43 1/2 x 40 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches
(110.5 x 102.9 x 69.9 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled, 2016
ceramic with glaze
24 x 20 x 20 inches
(61 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled, 2015
ceramic
26 x 31 x 14 inches
(66 x 78.7 x 35.6 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled (table with sun disc), 2013
ceramic, plaster, wood, glaze and paint
82 x 74 x 24 inches
(208.3 x 188 x 61 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled (head), 2012
ceramic and paint
30 x 17.5 x 14 1/2 inches
(76.2 x 44.5 x 36.8 cm)
Ruby Neri
Girl, 2010
plaster with ink and oil paint
44 x 21 x 41 inches
(111.8 x 53.3 x 104.1 cm)
Ruby Neri
Untitled (People with Horses), 2010
oil on panel
72 x 60 x 1 1/2 inches
(182.9 x 152.4 x 3.8 cm)