Ru Marshall
Reflecting Nature

Ru Marshall is a visual artist and a writer. In both practices, they are concerned with questions of doubt, certainty, and perception. During Ru’s career, they exhibited paintings, photographs, drawings, and videos in numerous venues in the United States and Europe. Also, their novel A Separate Reality was published by Carrol and Graf in 2006, while their writing has also appeared various publications. Ru has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, they’ve taught at The International Center of Photography and the Educational Alliance, and they are currently a visiting curator at Residencies Unlimited in Brooklyn.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I work on reflective surfaces. I start by taking photos of things seen in passing. I then print these on aluminum or silver vinyl. Sometimes I paint on top of these images. I’m working against the idea of photography as a technology that accurately fixes or documents phenomena. What matters to me is the fleeting and shifting nature of perception. I want to capture this, and, further, to involve the viewer as a participant in liminal perceptual states. I’m after moments in which it’s impossible to separate out the viewer and what’s viewed, the subject and the object. I’m also interested in dissolving the binary division between painting and photography. Additionally, I have a practice as an improvisational dancer, and I understand the relationship between the viewer and the artwork as a kind of dance. Recently, I’ve begun to incorporate plant imagery into my work. I want to investigate the tensions, accommodations, and interchanges between plants and humans in the twenty-first century urban environment, and how these differ in different cultures.