Plates

Rueter’s work is built on the layering and assemblage of materials, in service of, or in dialogue with a specific historical narrative. This project catalogues a repertoire of formal moves—collection, deconstruction, assemblage, fragmentation, the superimposition and embedding of bodies and objects into images—and uses them to fuse rather than layer concepts and materials.

The materials here are clothing and textiles taken from the artist’s wardrobe. The artist physically and digitally manipulates the design of the patterns to create new ones.

Each artefact and each pattern used here has a history within itself and within the context of her work. Prying them back, reducing them, Rueter selects just two patterns for each piece. She then joins those patterns, the pairing of the elements giving each a context. That context is not determined by an external narrative, but is internal to the work— a result of the tension between the two plates and the potential energy created by their friction. Each element of each piece is also given a subtext through a gentle reworking of familiar patterns and rhythms to suggest an ongoing narrative, even in the face of the abrupt visual stoppage inherent in the collision with its opposite.