Nancy Rubins
1952 - Present
Nancy Rubins transforms industrial, manufactured objects—such as mattresses, appliances, and boats—into the building blocks of her physically commanding monumental sculptures. Acting as an intermediary between the past and future states of her chosen materials, Rubins hones the formal rather than functional qualities of the discrete components comprising a single, cohesive sculpture. Brimming with the entropic energies of a force of nature, her arrangements evoke a precarious equilibrium of objects in space. Rubins’s practice cites both the traditions of modernist American monumental sculpture as well as bricolage, ultimately serving to emphasize the aesthetic possibilities of quotidian objects.