Friday, October 05, 2007
Collection Artist Kim Rugg at Mark Moore Gallery in LA
Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to present new works by emerging artist Kim Rugg. Rugg's work involves reducing and dismantling an object to its most elemental parts and then reconstructing it to reveal new meanings, to obliterate original ones, to change or destroy its function and to prompt the viewer to consider the familiar from an entirely new perspective. Often this method of deconstruction and reconstruction becomes politically charged. Her newspaper works - through her removal of the message - allow the viewer to consider the vehicle for the message, to contemplate the unquestioned ephemera of the day to day. Rugg exposes the hidden meaning within each structural component and shows how the information we process is "informed" before we even begin to think. By demonstrating the ease at which information can be rearranged and altered, Rugg calls into question what is commonly assumed to be neutral documentation. Somewhat paradoxically, Rugg's stamp and envelope pieces - whilst visually being very different - retain their original function; they are sent through the mail unperturbed. Consequently, these works are far more subversive as, to a degree, they actively undermine established, regulated systems. Rugg's work inspires the viewer to not only reconsider, but perhaps to even challenge, what is so casually understood as the accepted and unchangeable.
Kim Rugg graduated with a BA in painting from the City and Guilds of London Art School in 2002. In 2004 she received her MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, where she was awarded the Thames and Hudson prize. Recently she has predominantly exhibited in London, as well as participating in numerous art fairs across the United States including Pulse New York, Art Chicago, and Pulse Miami. This will be Rugg's inaugural solo show at the Mark Moore Gallery as well as being her first in the United States.