BODIES and MOVEMENTS, Upcoming Exhibition at Dalet Gallery

March 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Philadelphia                                                                      PRESS RELEASE

A moving spirit permeates the life of Ernestine Ruben, and her restless drive is the spiritual core of her creativity. While many of us experience static passivity, Ruben sees relentless motion; a spiral of life in each gesture and breath. Through her art, she invites her viewers to share her energy. The simplest details of the body become a living freeway full of tension and movement. Blood might flow below the skin’s surface, but in Ruben’s works the blood pulses and pounds in full view. Even Ruben’s mysterious depths of shadow contain a concentration of body life.

Some might view the exhibition called Bodies and Movement as a retrospective of Ruben’s work, but it is a far more complex entity. Bodies and Movement tells the visual story of how Ruben’s work has developed.

Her art refuses to submit to a linear, chronological order. Ruben explains, “My ideas arrive in clusters and flurries. I am prepared for this occasional invasion. I know how to control them and where they will be used. My work hasn’t proceeded in a straight line. Instead each artistic branch has its own independent burst which ultimately relates to a central root.” What holds the pieces of this show together? Ruben answers, “There is a wide variety of approaches to the human body, but what is constant are the various forms of movement through which I express my passion for life.”

Ruben finds movement in several ways. In her early work, she encourages the viewer to visually travel in and out of the image’s composition. By photographing speeding dancers and flashing lights, she expressed a second form of movement.  A third kind of movement was achieved through Ruben’s own gestures. In Maros, we see sweeping brush strokes, which render the image alive. Her moving spirit transforms the work’s surface. “I dance the additional layers onto my art.” Ruben’s unique paper pulp pieces are created using liquid paper’s flow, a swirling, graceful motion adding and growing to build a rare new art hybrid.

Ruben’s most recent explorations of movement and energy are revealed in her collaborations with dancer and video artist Peter Sparling called Photoformance. In this series, the still image reveals the potential of becoming a video experience. Ruben and Sparling collaborate in transforming still to video, land to water, passive to active, color to black and white.

This year Ruben’s forward movement adds a new facet to her art. Water adds an uncontrolled layer of natural movement. Dancers interacting in the rippling water generate changing shadows and forms. In Photoformance, the environment and the body are both cause and effect of changing movement. Another branch twists away from Ruben’s artistic tree. Who knows what new movement awaits her seeking spirit?

Ernestine Ruben, a graduate of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, B.A., History of Art, and Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, M.A., Art Education, 1956 is internationally known through extensive exhibitions, books, and workshops. Most of her life has been focused on art: growing up with it, studying history of art and working in sculpture. She has photographed the human body for many years.  Her work is included in many major museums and private collections including The Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA) the Rodin Museum (Paris, France), Stanford University Museum (Palo Alto, CA), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, Texas), Museum of Modern Art (Paris, France), Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan), Stedlijk Museum (Amsterdam, Holland), and Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris, France).
Published work includes, In Human Touch: Photographs by Ernestine Ruben; Ruben on Rodin;  Ernestine Ruben: A Retrospective Exhibition of Photography, Ernestine Ruben Photographs, Edition Stemmle, Schaffhausen, Zurich, 1989, Ernestine Ruben: Forms and Feelings, Paris Audiovisuel, 1990, Entre Deux, Paris Audiovisuel, Paris, 1987, photographs by Ernestine Ruben, poetry by Pierre Borhan.
Ernestine Ruben lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey and New York City.

Peter Sparling is Thurnau Professor of Dance at the University of Michigan and independent screendance artist. As former principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, chair of the U-M Department of Dance from 1988-93 and Artistic Director of Peter Sparling Dance Company from 1993-08, he has had extensive experience as director, choreographer, performer, teacher, lecturer, video artist, writer, collaborator, administrator and dance/arts consultant. His work with photographer Ernestine Ruben began with Photoformance: An Empathic Environment, commissioned by UM Museum of Art for its winter 2011 exhibitions. Their most recent collaboration, Water Alchemy, features Ruben’s underwater photographic imagery of Sparling’s figure reanimated in video editing by Sparling for the museum/gallery wall.

The exhibition will be on view at the Dalet Gallery, 141 N 2nd Street, Old City, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Gallery hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11AM – 6PM and by appointment.
Contact: Irena Gobernik, irena@daletart.com, 215.923.2424, 609.941.8084, www.daletart.com

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Dalet Gallery is specializing in contemporary art, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, mixed media and installations