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Raw, separate reality

Artist Hector Ruiz takes an unflinching look at America

Phoenix artist Hector Ruiz recalls how his great-grandmother banned running water and internal plumbing in the adobe hut she built.

"I liked going there, but my cousins didn't like the rawness," he says, his voice echoing in the airy space, fragrant with incense, at his Chocolate Factory Gallery in downtown Phoenix. His attitude is self-assured. He relaxes in a hooded sweatshirt and his black hair is slicked back into a ponytail.

Ruiz peppers his conversation with words like "rawness, extreme, contemporary, truthful" -- words that could easily describe his mixed-media, interactive pieces in his exhibition, La Realidad, (The Reality), which ends March 19 at the Heard Museum.

"I like the minority experience in the U.S. because it's different for everyone," he says, sipping on cappuccino from Paisley Violin across the street on Grand Avenue.  "I like to go back through history and expose the double history, the bicultural paradoxes and multiracial realities."

Of Mexican-American/Kickapoo Indian ancestry, Ruiz understands the sometimes-harsh realities of border culture (he grew up on the Texas border) and indigenous culture. The son of man who was born on a dirt floor in rural Mexico, Ruiz has a keen ability through his art to examine unsympathetic Eurocentric perceptions and Western obsessions with power and superiority over immigrants and Indians.

His exhibition at the Heard Museum was a milestone for both this 34-year-old artist and the Heard.  Nicole Haas, Heard marketing specialist, says Ruiz's show has received the most reviews and publicity of any exhibition ever held there.

Great-grandmother's raw ways may be where Ruiz inherited the need to adhere to his "ancient, traditional and deep-rooted foundations" with his wood-working techniques. Ruiz refuses to work with modern power tools because he says they contribute to overdevelopment and globalization.

In Ruiz's process, nondescript blocks of wood chip away to reveal his artistic vision. One of Ruiz's pieces, Don't Blame the Man, is a carved, burned wood male, clad in a Burberry, holding hands up if to say he's not responsible for the destruction of the family structure. 

Trophy Wives portrays a businessman squeezing a fat stogie while different versions of young, hot chicks spin on his left shoulder.  Ruiz's oversize and bigger-than-life wood sculptures convey the rough texture of the beautiful wood, contrasted with the chemical smell of the paints: The mix of sensory stimuli send an unsettling message about social decay in America -- where quantity supersedes quality.

The neighborhood where Ruiz's Chocolate Factory is located is a hotspot for young, emerging artists who are gaining critical recognition. 

Ruiz's reputation is growing, although he admits his intensity and controversial subjects -- racism, acculturation, materialism, cultural conflict -- makes some uncomfortable.

"Art can touch anything: historical, religious, political," he says. "It's interesting to be asked to tone down. I want to expose certain things and make people see the American experience with brown eyes."