MOCA Pacific Design Center
Sterling Ruby, SUPERMAX 2008 is a new installation commissioned and designed for the MOCA Pacific Design Center. SUPERMAX 2008 concludes the multidisciplinary artist’s trilogy of SUPERMAX exhibitions, which included a 2005 installation at Marc Foxx Gallery in LA and a 2006 installation at Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Germany. The title alludes to a style of maximum-security prison that proliferated in the US in the 1980s, motivated by absolute punishment and segregation rather than reform. It is a deliberate allegory for the repressive spaces and systems of the art world, especially the authoritarian aesthetic of Minimalism, a common target of Ruby’s art. SUPERMAX 2008 thus comprises a maximalist installation of colorful, handcrafted, unpolished art objects, densely packed into the single gallery space: sculptures, paintings, drawings, collages, many “defaced” with smudges and graffiti, others dripping with formless paint.
Begun in 1992, the original Focus Series (1992–1998) was dedicated to presentations of distinct bodies of work by artists working in all media and featured a roster of distinguished local and international artists.
The Focus Series quickly became core to the museum's mission and identity as the artist's museum. Over a subsequent three-year period in the mid-2000s, the series was revived briefly but powerfully, featuring primarily Los Angeles-based artists and representing the first Los Angeles museum exhibition for artists including Eric Wesley (2006), Lecia Dole-Recio (2006), Alexandra Grant (2007), and Sterling Ruby (2008).
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.
MOCA Focus: Sterling Ruby, SUPERMAX 2008 is organized by Philipp Kaiser, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.