Alison Ruttan (born 1954) is an American interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates human behaviors such as appetite, sexuality and aggression and the degree to which they are governed by biology or social conditioning. She has explored diverse media from animation to photography to installation and drawn on fields from primatology to social theory, creating work that ranges from light-hearted gender critique to sobering meditation on war. Ruttan has exhibited individually at the Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Three Arts Club of Chicago and Monique Meloche Gallery, and in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Drawing Center, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Apexart and Minneapolis Institute of Art, among many venues. She has also shown internationally at Directors Lounge (Berlin) and in Canada, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Her work has been discussed in journals such as Art in America, Flash Art, Art Papers, Sculpture, and New Art Examiner, as well as in major newspapers, magazines, and television and radio outlets. In addition to her art career, Ruttan has taught at several Chicago institutions, most notably the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been based in Chicago with her husband, artist Scott Stack, since 1990.
Life and career
Ruttan was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1954, but grew up in several places, including Washington D.C., California, and the Philippines, among many. After completing high school in the Twin Cities, Minnesota-area, Ruttan studied photography at the University of Michigan (BFA, 1976), training that continues to inform her aesthetic. After graduation, she returned to Minneapolis, shifted to painting that mixed figuration and abstraction, and married Scott Stack in 1980. In 1982, their daughter Natalie was born and they moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they lived until 1990.
In 1990, Ruttan enrolled in the graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) to study painting. While there, she began creating body-related installations, influenced by work in the school's fiber department, which included Anne Wilson and emphasized conceptualism and materiality. After graduating (MFA, 1992), Ruttan began teaching (Columbia College Chicago, 1993; SAIC, 1994–2001) and gaining notice for conceptual sculpture that she exhibited in Chicago alternative venues, as well as in New York, Minneapolis, and across the Midwest. In the 2000s, she exhibited regularly at the Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, taught at the University of Chicago (2001–6), and pursued her interest in primatology with an artist residency observing bonobos at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego (2005). In 2006, she returned to SAIC, where she teaches in the Contemporary Practices department. In recent years, Ruttan has exhibited in numerous universities and arts institutions, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, and Elmhurst Museum.
Work and reception
Unlike most artists, Ruttan's work is unified by its topical focus on understanding human behavior rather than by medium or style. Her inquiries lead her to diverse disciplines (primatology, evolutionary biology, feminism, political science, history) and often-new media that she chooses to best physically manifest the narrative she is structuring. Ruttan describes her process as research-based, immersive and non-hierarchical; her intent is to evoke a viewer's own relationship to a subject rather than elicit a specific response. Her practice can be divided into two thematic categories involving human drives, each with distinct bodies of work: 1) Inquiries into food and sex; and 2) Inquiries into aggression and war.