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THINKING ABOUT ART
Jose Ruiz at G Fine Art
By J.T. Kirkland
Monday, June 13, 2005

If there is a nicer, more deserving artist in the world than Jose Ruiz, I want to know his or her name. Some background is in order. Jose has participated in several of my projects and we have communicated frequently over email. Jose not too long ago lived in Washington, DC, but he recently moved to NYC. Though we had never met we constantly had interesting back and forth dialogue. Given that, you see why I was so excited to see Jose's show at G Fine Art, which opened on Saturday.

Finally I got to meet Jose and he was incredibly too nice. On his night he wouldn't stop asking about my work and show, and he kept introducing me to HIS well-wishers. That's enough about Jose though!! The work in this show - several photographs and a video - is brilliantly done. Somehow I can sense this although I certainly don't "get" all there is to get in his work. I believe Jose's work is highly conceptual and although during a busy opening reception I couldn't quite figure it out, I was able to be attracted to the visual quality of the work. And if I needed any more of a hint the vast majority of viewers were crammed into the project room to see Ruiz's work instead of whatever the boring stuff was in the main space.

My two favorite pieces are below. The image with two stills (it's a video piece) show Kelly Towles on the left putting up some mild-mannered graffiti and then Jose on the right "erasing" the graffiti. It's a fun piece to watch. We could probably harmonize on the work for hours and be fascinated by all the allusions in the piece. For these purposes, let's leave it at saying it's just good ol' fun to watch. The second piece below is a large photograph of toilet paper. You can see it. You don't need me to say anything about it. It's called "Wax On - Wax Off." What do you think it's about?