Kathy Ruttenberg & Lise Stoufflet
The Armory Show
Booth P10
September 8 - 12, 2022
“Tree Hugger was very much a personal expression of my frustration at being unable to find a suitable partner of the same species and the feeling of isolation within this constraint.”
—Kathy Ruttenberg, In Dreams Awake
“Of course, all of Ruttenberg’s sculptures of females turning into trees can also be understood in relationship to images of the mythological naiad Daphne, transformed into a laurel tree by her overprotective father, to escape the sexual advances of the sun god, Apollo. Sculpted in marble by Bernini in the early 1620s, with her arms miraculously turning into branches and her skin into bark, Daphne is among the most acclaimed sculptures in the entire history of art. Ruttenberg presented herself as a Daphne in her magnificent Tree Hugger, 2010. From the waist up the female has hardened with defensive bark and sprouted prickly branches, while goat man in his striped trousers holds her like a dance partner. Ruttenberg has decorated his back with a tree growing along his spinal column and with the image of a deer with a human face based directly on Frida Kahlo’s famous little painting The Wounded Deer, 1946, a self-portrait of her bodily and spiritual suffering in marriage, according to the revealing 1983 biography of the great Mexican painter by art historian Hayden Herrera.”
—Charles Stuckey, Nature of the Beast
Kathy Ruttenberg
Kathy Ruttenberg (b. 1957, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, painting, and animation. Emerging from New York's early 1980s East Village art scene, her allegorical paintings contributed to the vitality of the new figurative expressionism of the era. Over the last four decades her work has gradually shifted from painting towards an emphasis on sculpture. Oscillating between the intimate to the monumental, she uses ceramic, bronze, and light to explore themes of ecofeminism, animal liberation, and sexuality. Ruttenberg lives and works in Upstate New York.
Lise Stoufflet, Madame Nature, 2022, Oil on canvas, 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches, 170 x 140 cm
Lise Stoufflet, Constellation, 2022, Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 63 inches, 200 x 160 cm
Lise Stoufflet, Moons, 2022, Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 98 3/8 inches, 200 x 250 cm
Lise Stoufflet, Beautiful Landscape, 2022, Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 98 3/8 inches, 200 x 250 cm
Lise Stoufflet
Lise Stoufflet’s (b. 1989, Paris, FR) work explores the mystery, eroticism, and ambiguity of the everyday, guided by the illusory power of painting, perception, and imagination. Her enigmatic narratives, informed by dream logic, childhood memories, and allegory, are often populated by faceless figures, masks, skin suits, and hands bound by ribbons and bows. Trails of braided hair weave through compositions without a beginning or end in sight, giant eyes peer down from atop stakes, dwarfed buildings appear petrified in bell jars—all of which conjure tension, uncanniness, and dark humor. Stoufflet captures how dreams can manipulate even the most mundane and sensical objects, materials, and experiences. In Stoufflet’s universe, paradoxes and the illogical reign. Stoufflet lives and works in Paris.