Brie Ruais Solo Exhibition at Contemporary Craft

Contemporary Craft is excited to announce Oneness: Brie Ruais, the first in its new Tomayko Solo Artist Elevation Series. Featuring the work of New Mexico based ceramic artist Brie Ruais, the exhibition will open on Friday, February 2 and will be on view through May 4, 2024.

In her work, Ruais focuses on ideas around mapping places geographically, psychologically, and experientially. Each work starts with clay equal to Ruais’ body weight at the time. From there, she uses her body as a tool to push and shape the clay into its final form, completing the work in under 15 minutes. Through this process, her work inherently addresses the experience of embodiment: movement-based artwork that forges an intimacy with the viewer’s experience.

Oneness is a large survey of work, spanning eight years and exploring the idea that memory, place, and experience are based on an individual’s perception and haptic experience. Each work resembles a microcosm in documenting time and place through a human lens and humans’ intervention on nature.

Ruais’ sculptures address the dichotomies within existence – that there is both an inner world and a world outside your body, that humans live in a state of relatedness and are parts of a whole, as well as what it means to acknowledge and respond to nature. Oneness, a philosophical term that interweaves through Ruais’ work, represents a sense of interconnectedness – a transcendence of boundaries.

Opening Reception and Related Events

Opening Reception: Friday, February 2, 5:30 – 8:00 PM. Free and open to the public.
Artist-Led Guided Tour with Brie Ruais: Saturday, February 3, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Guided Tours: Saturday, March 2, April 6, and May 4, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM