Alexander Gray Associates in New York will present “Ruby Sky Stiler: Long Pose,” the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The show will comprise new paintings alongside a large-scale bas-relief mural designed to encircle the exhibition space. The exhibition continues Stiler’s investigation of art historical archetypes, recasting traditions of figuration and the nude through a contemporary lens.
The title, “Long Pose,” invokes the academic convention of life drawing, highlighting the artist’s ongoing dialogue with historical forms and techniques. Stiler’s practice centers on the productive tension between abstraction and representation and the interplay between flatness and dimensionality. Drawing on her background in printmaking, she creates mosaic-like compositions assembled from hundreds of small, cropped drawings transferred into paint. This technique reworks Cubist fragmentation. The paintings on view are rendered primarily in shades of blue, with fractal-like geometries from which figures emerge. The artist explains this precariousness: “They are almost falling apart into geometry—you take one thing away and they would be just shapes”.
The exhibition’s titular work is a bas-relief mural, also titled “Long Pose”. It unifies the paintings within a linear architectural framework. Constructed from wood and painted in an earthen hue reminiscent of Pompeiian Red, it reflects Stiler’s interest in the shifting nature of historical memory and modern restoration. Though its proportions recall monumental steel sculptures, the artist describes the work as visually and materially light, a sculpture “that does not define your path; it does not push you around”. The mural’s abstracted figures are inspired by caryatids, which Stiler moves beyond their gendered architectural symbolism to become universal emblems of resilience.
Stiler’s exploration of representation draws on diverse historical references, from Bauhaus architecture and Art Deco to the graphic patterns of Anni Albers and Alexander Girard. She integrates these with intimate, diary-like drawings, including her own sketches and her children’s artwork. This collage ethos, reminiscent of Louise Nevelson, blurs the lines between sculpture and installation. Themes of family and youth are recurrent, with paintings offering expanded portrayals of kinship, such as female-led social structures and father-child bonding.
The exhibition similarly addresses the patriarchal foundations of academic drawing. Several works respond to these precedents from a distinctly feminist perspective, rejecting idealization in favor of novel ways of imagining the nude. By merging the personal with the historical, “Long Pose” allows cultural conventions to be reconsidered as evolving forms that bridge time and experience.
Exhibition History and Schedule
Ruby Sky Stiler has been the subject of multiple solo presentations, including at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Fairfield University Art Museum, and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Rhode Island School ofDesign Museum; and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, among others.
The titular mural, “Long Pose,” was completed in 2025. “Ruby Sky Stiler: Long Pose” will be on view at Alexander Gray Associates, New York, from November 7 to December 20, 2025. An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, November 7, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
