Rosa Loy & Kathy Ruttenberg at Lyles and King

a terrific dialog between two artists of similar vision in different disciplines

Rosa Loy Speicher, 2024 Casein on canvas 59 1/4 x 51 1/4 inches 150.5 x 130.2 cm (60 7/8 x 53 x 2 1/2 inches framed)

The press release for this small exhibit in Lyles and King’s backroom/project space/ annex begins with:

This natural pairing, so to speak, highlights the symbiosis between fantasy, nature, and the artist’s inner lives.

All of which is true, especially in regards to the narrative content. Both artists espouse the virtues of ecofeminism. But I think the main takeaway is how well the work of both artists communicates, propelling a rather complex conversation across two very different visual media. Normally in a two person show—especially featuring different disciplines like this one does with painting and sculpture—one looks for similarities of theme, areas in which the two artists may overlap thematically. But in this show, the two artists march in tight lock-step, visually finishing each others sentences while exploring themes of ecofeminism. So in this case one looks not for similarities but for differences, variations between the two. Loy and Ruttenberg say many of the same things, but they say them differently.

Installation shot Rosa Loy & Kathy Ruttenberg at Lyles and King

Loy's paintings— always enigmatic—are even more so in this show. In works like Nähe, Loy mines her usual territory, depicting female relationships and the subtle connections between them. Her work is highly stylized in its figuration, as she was trained as a Socialist Realist in communist East Germany. Speicher, is evocative of that Social Realist lineage, as the protagonist wields a flag/banner as other women tend to agricultural tasks. Communist propaganda was a part of Loy’s artistic training and resurfaces in her work from time to time in a subversive fashion—not overpowering, but often seemingly used an additive spice. Despite propaganda being a serious business for the State, in the West one can mingle it with the whimsical, as Loy often does, at other times she veers towards the dark and surreal, as we see in Nähe and Muster respectively, with its bowl of decapitated heads beneath the table. Meaning is at least partly blurred by the absurdity of mixing disparate elements.

Rosa Loy Muster, 2023 Casein on canvas 43 1/4 x 35 1/2 inches 109.9 x 90.2 cm

This use of the non-sequitur leads to beguiling, obtuse narratives. The women Loy depicts could be sisters, best friends, mothers and daughters, former or future selves. They are usually portrayed in some type of dialogue, complete with layers of meaning and subtext that you can infer by visual clues: how close to each other the characters stand or sit, how they interact with one another, how they meet each other’s gaze (or don’t). These are conversations to which we are not exactly privy, as these women are speaking to one another or to themselves. And yet, trained as we are to look for narratives in figurative work, their relationships intrigue us because they are so ambiguous and not fully spelled out. Further clarity might ruin the effect.

One notable difference in this exhibit is Loy's palette, full of rich earth tones. This shift in color seemed to dovetail nicely with the Ruttenberg sculptures. Additionally, the female figure emerging from the tree stump in Nähe seems to be directly lifted from the ecosystem of Ruttenberg, who also features female anthropomorphic hybrids. But while Ruttenberg’s sculptures features women communing with Nature, Loy’s feature women communicating with other women, in Nature. Based on that difference, one could say that Ruttenberg’s narratives are thus more intimate, personal and in that way less obviously propagandistic. But are they?

Kathy Ruttenberg Humanity Belongs To Nature, 2025 Ceramic 24 x 16 x 5 1/2 inches 61 x 40.6 x 14 cm

Ruttenberg’s use of the ceramic medium is itself is evocative of Bavarian Porcelain, or traditional Geisha Figurines, but recast in a subversive context. The woman communing with nature in Kathy Ruttenberg’s work are depicted as being one with Nature—integrated with the natural world to the point of blending Self—the female psyche as being one with the landscape she lives in.

One of the main tenets of ecofeminism is the belief that women are disproportionately affected by environmental issues. Whether this is actually the case or not is beyond the scope of this review—of main importance to understanding Ruttenberg’s work is to know that her arguments hinge heavily on such ecofeminist themes. She depicts women in close proximity, in communication with flowers, trees, roots, animals. In Humanity Belongs to Nature, a woman holds a beetle, as if holding a child, and is seen through a window in a larger beetle’s thorax. The fragment is both contained and repeated within the whole.

Kathy Ruttenberg Epiphyte, 2025 Ceramic, Copper, Patina 14 x 11 x 8 inches 35.6 x 27.9 x 20.3 cm

Some of the protagonists are nude, with the exception of black high heeled shoes, as seen in Epiphyte. But the effect is not sexual in nature. Rather there is a whimsicality to this subversion, a trope thwarted by the feminist context. Though it’s highly doubtful that high heels are the type of footwear to best wander into the forest and commune with nature, they do function well as a signifier of femininity.

My first thought on seeing the pairing of these two artist at Lyles and King was "Why hasn't this happened before?" which was immediately followed by, "If this show were enlarged, it would make a great museum exhibit." But as it is, though the works were small scale, the conversation the two artists had with one another outsized the small, intimate setting of the annex. Overall, a terrific exhibit. I think it would be very interesting if Lyles& King does another iteration of it, scaled up to encompass the whole gallery.

Installation shot of Rosa Loy & Kathy Ruttenberg at Lyles and King

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

The show ran at L&K from April 11 - May 10, 2025, so this review is a bit late. My apologies. I was in the midst of preparing an exhibit I myself curated, “A Mysterious Vision” at Robilant + Voena, which opened My 6th. (I’ve done a few Substack posts about the run-up to it)

You can see more images and read the press release to “Rosa Loy & Kathy Ruttenberg” at Lyles and King, here.