The Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation is pleased to present a new three-part exhibition at the Foundation’s gallery in the Ice House Studios, Pittsburgh. GEOMETRICS / BON VIVANT / EQUILIBRIAL WONDER features artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber’s Plexiglas jewelry, screenprints and monochromatic vacuum-formed Plexiglas sculptures respectively - created during the 1960s and 1970s.
GEOMETRICS was the brand identity formed by deRoy Gruber in the early 1970s through which the artist designed and distributed small-scale, wearable versions of the vacuum-formed Plexiglas sculptures she had come to master within a fine-art context. Single, double and triple tier pendant arrangements designed to be worn around the neck were crafted alongside a variety of belt-buckles consisting of a single vibrant Plexiglas composition affixed on a metal-plated base. Nearly twenty select pieces from the original Geometrics collection are on view including several from the deRoy Gruber collection as well as from the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, Melissa McSwigan & Robert Rzaka, Frieda Cushing, and the artist’s daughter, Jamie deRoy.
BON VIVANT - borrowed from the title of deRoy Gruber’s smallest serigraph printed in 1976 - presents an array of the artist’s mutlicolor screenprints throughout which Day-Glo fluorescent pigments are heavily integrated. Eight compositions proffer the artist’s rounded square motif, repeated in both a grid formation and in a radial arrangement. Prepared for the exhibition is a limited edition screenprint by Pittsburgh-based designer Andrew Paul in which he incorporated deRoy Gruber’s original 1960s studio Day-Glo dry pigments.
EQUILIBRIAL WONDER will debut deRoy Gruber's early greyscale and translucent Plexiglas sculptures constructed during the artist's early years with sculpture which would establish the structural hallmarks of deRoy Gruber’s three dimensional works in the years that followed.
Special Thanks to our visionary collectors who have graciously loaned works for this exhibition: Beth Rudin DeWoody, Melissa McSwigan & Robert Rzaka, the family of Alex and Margie Ellenbogen, Frieda Cushing, and the artist’s daughter and business partner Geometrics, Jamie deRoy.
Thank you to DAYGLO Color, Cleveland
For their support of this exhibition and for providing DAYGLO product, long favored by Aaronel