ABOUT | robert ruby fine art

Robert Ruby is a Canadian born artist with a formal education in Fine Art, and lives and works in Southern Ontario in Canada.

Although he works with a variety mediums, most of his art is assemblages.

~ Studied Fine Art Environmental / 3 Year Interdisciplinary, Fanshawe College. London, ON

~ Solo show 2023 'THE MECHANICS of MEANING' Assemblage Art / STEPAG, St Thomas ON
~ Participating Artist Harbourfront Centre Gallery / International Sculpture Symposium, Toronto ON
~ Participating Artist Glenhyrst Gallery / Taste of Glenhyrst, Brantford ON
~ Art Fusion Gallery Group Show, London ON
~ Westland Gallery Group Show 2020, London ON

~ Featured Solo Exhibit Trajectory Gallery, London ON

~ Multiple ACE Awards (Gold, Silver & Bronze) for creative excellence, Hamilton ON

- Co-founder of Brant Studio Tours, Brantford & Brant County ON

~ Former Non Credit Photography Instructor at Fanshawe College

~ Former Non Credit Photographic Lighting Instructor at Concordia University

~ Former Feature Photographer at Hamilton Magazine

~ Former Cover/Feature Photographer at FIVE Magazine
~ Former Cover Feature Photographer at Sales Promotion Magazine
~ Former Owner/Operator Robert Ruby Studios and Gallery ~ Commercial Photographic Media & Fine Arts

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ASSEMBLAGE ART - WHAT IS IT?

Assemblages are aggregates; a whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements.

Disparate is defined as the action, process, or result of combining or uniting different materials, usually not associated with one another.

"The term was first introduced to the art world by the “outsider” artist Jean Dubuffet in the 1950s, but there were lots of examples of this technique earlier in the past, some of which are quite easy to recognize, and some lie hidden beneath the veil of history."

"These include early works by Pablo Picasso and other representatives of Cubism, whose approach to assembling goes beyond the surface of an image, or the volume of a body, since the entire philosophy of cubism relies on fragmentation. Still, the genesis of assemblage owes a lot to the introduction of a ready-made, which made it possible for everyday objects to participate in the creation of art projects, once again pointing to Marcel Duchamp, the father of art as we know it today."

"Thanks Marcel. You were an early inspiration of mine, and partly responsible for some of the work I displayed many years ago in an International Sculpture Symposium at Harborfront Centre in Toronto ON." (Robert Ruby)

Kurt Schwitters, another early inspiration of Robert's wrote, "I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world", and "I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable."

"I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together."

(Kurt Schwitters)