Esther Ruiz b. 1986

Esther Ruiz (b. 1986, Houston TX) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Ruiz creates objects that operate simultaneously as miniature landscapes from a distant future and actual size sculptures informed by the family of Minimalism. The cylinder, the semicircle, the triangle, and other Euclidean forms are combined into colorful and expressive freestanding sculpture.

Beginning with a collection of emotions, memories, impressions of light, and sounds, then translates them into an abstract geometric aesthetic, she uses the minimalist vocabulary to create relics of imagined experiences. Of her creative process, Ruiz says: “The imagery I work with is born out of exploring and researching fictional places imagined in my mind. Ultimately, my work exists as an effort to visually explain an emotional state of mind with mathematical acuteness, hence the paired down materials and forms.”

Ruiz received a BA in Studio Art from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee in 2011. She was a recipient of the 2016 Artist Grant and Williamsburg Studio Lottery from SpaceWorks and the 2014 ArtBridge Urban Modulations Public Art Installation and Award. Her work has been exhibited in New York at Carvalho Park, CHART, yours mine & ours gallery, New Release Gallery, Regina Rex, Field Projects, Planthouse Gallery, Urban Glass, and Brooklyn Academy of Music, among other national exhibitions at Reynolds Gallery (Richmond, VA), Cross MacKenzie Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Platform (Baltimore, MD), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), and the American Center for Physics (College Park, MD). Her work has been reviewed in publications including The Washington Post, Art News, VICE, The Wall Street Journal, The American Ceramic Society, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio (NPR).