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Eli Ruhala
White Columns is pleased to present an exhibition by Eli Ruhala (b. 2000, Dallas, TX.)
A recent graduate of Texas Christian University, Ruhala makes large-scale site-specific paintings that incorporate architectural components and building materials as a means of excavating his experience growing up queer in the rural South. Writing about his practice, Ruhala has said, “As an artist drawing from an array of personal and collective experiences, my practice finds catharsis in repetitive gestures of love. (…) I’m interested in the ability to carve out a new sphere where the mutual action of keeping our hands busy persists.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a new conversation between Ruhala and the Dallas-based art historian and curator Abby Bryant.
Abby Bryant: I’ve had the privilege of watching your work evolve for over a decade. You were trained conventionally as a painter, but your practice has expanded to include materials that are more likely to be found on a construction site than in a studio. What compelled this shift, and what possibilities do you find in these surfaces?
Eli Ruhala: At first, I didn’t use these materials as a means of commentary about painting; they were simply a combination of materials that were available and easily accessible within the rural town where I lived. I worked on construction job sites with my stepdad, listening to stories and watching how materials were handled. I realized my relationship to those materials and their context was different. There’s a “get-it-done” attitude in construction that overlooks the beauty in what’s already there. I’d spend days making little carvings from scraps of drywall for no reason other than curiosity. I didn’t fit in with the pace or the banter, but those memories stayed with me.
Studying oil painting and its history felt like the right next step. Many painters treat oil painting as a tool to pursue a form or storytelling, but I see the medium as something with its own identity. I want to free materials from the roles they’re assigned and expand painting to include other forms.
Early on, I was told I applied too little paint by thinning it out into glazes. Now, I see that restraint as respect for the material, a way of making it last longer, and honoring it. Mixing joint compound with pigment gave me a medium that could stretch further than oil. Beyond that, it let me bring my own history and background into the work, the perspective of someone who never quite fit on the job site.
Read the rest of the press release here.
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