Sterling Ruby's SP series (2007–2014) captures the atmospheric essence of Los Angeles, where smog-filtered light transforms urban sprawl into luminous horizons. Inspired by the artist's daily commutes between the San Gabriel Mountains and his downtown studio, these works layer vibrant spray paint to evoke the region's shifting environmental rhythms. In SP261, a fluorescent yellow-green canvas showcases Ruby's technique of rapid aerosol bursts and dynamic drips, translating LA's ephemeral skies into abstract fields. The painting's hazy gradients and chromatic intensity mirror the tension between natural grandeur and urban energy, oscillating between fragility and resilience. Ruby's canvas becomes an archive of the city's light, grounding the ever-shifting dialogue between earth and sky while reflecting the enduring vitality of the Southern California landscape. Ruby’s work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Ruby’s sculpture DOUBLE CANDLE (2018) is installed permanently at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.

Mega Generous Gift of the Artist

Inspired by the ever-changing graffiti-covered landscape surrounding his Los Angeles studio, Sterling Ruby’s spray-painted abstractions channel the raw energy of street art into ethereal, transcendent visions. Shrouded in hazy sfumato vapors, his compositions blend and combine endless layers of luminous color. Ruby’s spray-paint works, which the artist initiated in 2007 and pursued intensively in the following years, represent some of the most significant achievements of his diverse practice, which spans installation, collage, video, and sculpture.  Positioned uniquely within the confines of contemporary painting, Ruby’s art bridges Abstract Expressionism, Pop, the spray-can techniques of Christopher Wool, and the grandiose graffiti of Rudolf Stingel, causing Jeffrey Deitch to describe his work as “the sublime refinement of Mark Rothko … crossed with the anarchic gestures of spray-can graffiti,” in 2012. A hallucinogenic tribute to urban subculture, Ruby’s paintings confront inner-city conflict through a fusion of anarchism and ambient abstraction. Ruby’s fascination with street culture stems from his observations of the tense relationship between graffiti artists and the authorities who sought to erase their work from the urban landscape. “My studio [in Los Angeles] was in Hazard Park, where the Avenues and MS13 gangs were fighting over drugs and territory,” he explained. “Their disputes were visually apparent through massive amounts of tagging. The city responded by sending out anti-graffiti teams at night, using power paint sprayers to cover the day’s graffiti in muted beige or gray washes. The city did this under the cover of darkness, while the gangs seemed to prefer the vulnerability of the day. One wall, in particular, became the focal point of these territorial disputes. By early morning, four to five rival tags would already be layered, still decipherable. By nightfall, the markings blurred into abstraction. All territorial clashes, aggressive cryptograms, and death threats were nullified into a mass of spray-painted gestures—an immense, outdoor, nonrepresentational mural. The city teams would then paint over it again, and the cycle would restart the next day. I started painting again when I saw this.” As a result, Ruby’s paintings capture the raw temporality of urban surfaces, where marks are constantly being made, erased, and redefined. His compositions merge frenetic energy with kaleidoscopic visual effects, transforming dysfunction into a catalyst for beauty. Layer upon layer, his canvases mirror the endless cycle of creation and obliteration he observed in the streets—where individual expression is both celebrated and suppressed, and the remnants of one mark serve as the foundation for another. This visual palimpsest creates a landscape of movement as if his works are still evolving, caught between chaos and control. “I have always thought of art as similar to poetry,” Ruby told Flash Art in 2010, “[in] that it can’t be proven and yet if done right, has a sense of unmistakable aura.” This philosophy is deeply embedded in his work. While his art defies classification, his acidic compositions draw parallels to Abstract Expressionist masterworks. Ruby’s hazy, atmospheric abstractions evoke the iconic color field paintings of Mark Rothko from the 1950s and ’60s, both featuring incandescent canvases with commanding wall presence. Whereas Rothko sought to elevate viewers into the sublime, Ruby’s abstraction roots us in contemporary reality. His work is visceral and physical, engaging with Minimalism’s rhetoric of authority and control through deconstructive gestures. While Rothko aimed to inspire spiritual awakening, Ruby examines urban violence, societal repression, and personal liberation within his fervent masses of color.