: SELECTED PRESS / ESSAYS

McLEAN PROJECT FOR THE ARTS
Strictly Painting IV (curator’s essay)
By Deborah McLeod
June 2003

[excerpt]
The inclination to non-materialism runs throughout Strictly Painting’s collection of works. Jose Ruiz’s installation “Over Your Couch Painting” is one such painting to introduce the direction. Ruiz may be mocking the decór-driven response to art, but on the other hand, no one is a stranger to the elusive search for a consummate green. It is a raw disquiet (anguish, even) that reaches beyond the comfort of an adequate sofa and stands in for many uncertainties. In fact, the other works surrounding Over Your Couch generally barter in notions of discomfort and figments of reconciliation.

A poet speaker on a radio show recently said that ours is an ambiguous world, and ambiguous poetry was all that could appropriately identify it for us. Looking at the paintings in this juried exhibition, one may see fit to apply that wisdom here. It makes ambiguity intimate, familiar, as personal as a salad bar is to your salad. Settle down on “Over Your Couch Painting’s little sofa and rest in that assurance.