Aïda Ruilova
The Singles 1999 – Now

January 24 – March 15, 2009

Curators: Paul Ha and Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson

Opening Reception: January 24, 3–5 p.m. with performance I’m a Brawl by Aïda Ruilova and Caitlin Cook

Aïda Ruilova
You’re Pretty (still), 1999
Single-channel video
Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York

Combining classical cinematic devices with a distinctively jarring, low-tech sensibility, New York-based artist Aïda Ruilova creates dark, narrative video work. Aïda Ruilova: The Singles 1999 – Now presents a survey of the artist’s single-channel video work since 1999. Ruilova is one of a young generation of artists who employ media in innovative ways with a do-it-yourself aesthetic, often drawing upon contexts — like cinema, music, and popular culture — that exist outside the art world. Her short video loops often feature characters performing cryptic and physically uncomfortable actions, revealing her fascination with the conjunction of horror movie aesthetics and the sublime. A compelling, though obscured, narrative is created, overwhelming the viewer with questions. Unidentified, Ruilova’s characters and their relationships remain ambiguous, and the viewer is left to actively detangle the action.

Ruilova’s works have a strong formal and associative relationship to music. Ruilova, a classically trained musician, was a member of the experimental music group Alva. Her videos feature visceral experiences of discrete sounds — among them evocative phrases muttered repetitively, heavy breathing, scrunching guitar strings, and vinyl LPs being scraped across cement — that reinforce both the physicality of her editing and the isolation, claustrophobia, and extreme psychological stresses of contemporary life that are alluded to throughout her work.

Aïda Ruilova: The Singles 1999 – Now is co-organized by the Aspen Art Museum and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.