Recent Reviews / Related writing

This where we meet
Vane, Newcastle upon tyne
Published Date and Location: 29th October 2011, London, UK
Source: The Guardian Newspaper
Writer: Robert Clark

Simon Le Ruez considerably extends his poignant creative vocabulary with this show of recent sculptures, installations and paintings. Le Ruez’s sculptural scenarios have all along evoked moments of psychological suspense, with the deceptive reassurance of domestic props subtly undermined by hints of a decidedly unsavory eroticism. Le Ruez’s ability to lead the viewer on with aesthetic charms and a painstaking technical finesse is no way diminished, yet these recent works carry a far more bewildering undertone of enigmatic unease. Junk-shop postcards have been doctored to leave inconclusive suspicions of moody and momentous goings-on behind the scenery.
Screwed-up paper scraps are caught up in tense ghost-town constructions. Themes are suggested with such subtlety that one is left wondering whether the story is all made up in one’s own multi-track mind. One no longer knows for sure what on earth is inferred. Le Ruez gets better with each show.


Unidentified Friends
Cube gallery, Manchester
Published Date and Location: 27th December 2010, London, UK
Source: The Guardian Newspaper
Writer: Robert Clark

Referring to his work’s aura of seductively suspended disbelief, Simon Le Ruez quotes a line from the surrealist artist Claude Cahun “Dear Friend … It does not look true but it is true.” Le Ruez sets up little architectural misalignments that reveal cryptic scenarios. His recent work might be getting more and more deceptively and adventurously simple in construction, yet the air of unease continues to expand. One suspects his fragments of imagery are somehow something other than they appear, are really leading us somewhere else. Photographic slides capture pedestrians, their heads obscured by a mysterious grey globe. Clustered drapes conceal God knows what. Sculptural door and window frames enable us to look out onto variations of nothing and nowhere. Throughout it all Le Ruez makes it real through his meticulous command of compositional tension, the way the stage is set for an unending suspense that is quietly thrilling. 

Unidentified Friends
Cube gallery, Manchester
Published Date and Location: 18th November 2010, Manchester, UK
Source: www.creativetourist.com
Writer: Susie Stubbs

Unidentified flying objects. Simon Le Ruez, the Sheffield and Berlin-based sculptor, begins a prize-winning residency at CUBE this week with a new solo exhibition. Le Ruez’s work starts with the familiar – the buildings, streets and people that populate the city – but soon spirals into an unsettling mish-mash of drawing, video and photography. It seems that the artist is intent on playing with gallery visitors: he deliberately obscures the faces of the strangers he photographs, for example, in odd and slightly surreal ways. This is an exhibition that is worth a look, not least as it demonstrates CUBE’s quiet quest to stage challenging, thought-provoking shows that straddle art, architecture and design. Unidentified Friends, CUBE, 19 November-22 January 2011.