DAVID GIBSON WRITING

  Brie Ruais' sculptures, and the manner of their presentation, convey a regard for the condition of presence. They are rough hewn yet brilliantly polished, large in scale and impossibly heavy. They project a quality of being detritus, of being torn and ragged remains after a process of at first rumination and then wreckage has left only skeletal remains of them. They are like something ripped from a proper fabric and left to decay. When I first encountered these sculptures at Mesler Feuer Gallery in June of 2015, they did not immediately read as clay. They resembled large blocks of cast metal, though I could not reconcile the forms themselves with the color that seemed so central to their presentation. I encourage a certain ignorance in the practice of encountering artworks, because it's about the context of first-hand experience rather than documentation and information gathering after the fact. I prefer to let looking take its course, even if I am due to make