Sites:
Additional Websites of interest:
- incoming - { a ruzz tumblog }
- all the ridiculous, interesting, and odd things that come through my various inputs. snippets from email, text, twitter, the mouths of babes--usually obscured so no one gets too hurt..
- ruzz on formspring:
- a pretty handy website for asking anonymous questions. I will try to answer anything you ask honestly.
about i.m. ruzz
i.m. ruzz is a Calgary, Alberta, Canada based writer, photographer & film maker. He concentrates largely on photography and continues to develop a highly stylized, dark, raw look at the world. i.m. ruzz has not published any books, or exhbited and does a fine job of avoiding becoming established. He's well known for his ability to make any project lose money and fame.
An introduction to i.m. ruzz, by Brad Simkulet
taken in whole from the forward of "labours in the fields of sorrows" an upcoming book of photos.
Artists, like philosophers, tend to believe they are engaged in a search for truths. They may search for the truth of pain while acting on stage; they may write about the truth of life in their novels , poetry or drama; they may paint the truth of the world they see around them with water colours, oils or acrylics; or they may capture the truth of frozen moments with their cameras. Whatever the form, there is one search for truth that artists prize above all others - the search for truth in beauty. Artists flatter themselves that they uncover this truth all the time, and we flatter ourselves that they have achieved their goals in the countless works of art we venerate for their supposed beauty. The truth is that few artists have uncovered 'true' beauty, and fewer have even tried; the truth is that we delude ourselves at our own peril by believing in the ideals they create; the truth is that our greatest artistic lies have been told in the name of beauty, and we believe them.
Artists nearly always create images of beauty that they wish could be, not images of beauty that really are. They idealize their subjects, morphing the reality of a woman, a man, or a place to suit their personal aesthetics. This is not a criticism so much as an acknowledgement of the mechanism of art. Artists cannot help manipulating the world to serve their purposes. It is what they do. Thus, when an artist is primarily concerned with beauty, the result is something that does not exist in the world of flesh. Artists create perfect shapes that fulfill the beauty imperative of their cultural-historical moment; artists remove the blemishes and scars and imperfections of life, erasing the existence of 'flaws' in pursuit of the flawless; artists provide us with something to aspire to, something to become, rather than showing us a mirror of what is. Thus, the truth found in most works of art is at best a truth limited to the artist and those who share the artist's aesthetic. It takes a rare artist, indeed, to possess the requisite humility and arrogance to capture beauty that is not ideal.
i.m. ruzz is such an artist. The proof is the lush, sombre, hopeful, aching, risky book you hold in your hands. labours in the fields of sorrow is his vital meditation on what is beautiful about the human form, and it comes as close to capturing the truth in beauty as any work ever created.
As an artist, i.m. ruzz cannot help idealizing those things that he finds beautiful in the world around him, but he distinguishes himself by not creating a false ideal. He uses his art to highlight the natural beauty of humanity, recognizing that true beauty is not found in illusions of unattainable perfection but in the reality of decay, atrophy, and imperfection.
Consider the cover, a piece called 'this is the one.' i.m. ruzz takes an already iconic moment of popular culture, the opening shot of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, a moment renowned for its lingering shot of Scarlett Johansson's 'beautiful' bum in panties, and he subverts it very subtly to reveal the true beauty of a woman in the real world. Crafting 'this is the one' in a grainy, textured black and white, i.m. ruzz's composition draws our attention along a seam in his faceless model's polka dot, see-through panties, which is slightly misaligned with the crack of her behind. We see dappled skin on her thigh just beyond the panties, blemishes beneath the skein of gauzy material that covers her bum, a price tag still attached to the waistband, and our eyes travel along leg lines to the soles of her feet, where we see the blackened dirtiness and calloused skin that is the ineluctable focus of the piece. This woman's feet are lived in. They are not the perfectly hydrated, pedicured, immaculately kept feet of a specialty foot model. They are the feet of a real woman: feet that have developed calluses along the heel rim from walking in painful shoes; feet that are dirty from the environmental realities of sidewalks and gardens and carpets and tile; feet that are beautiful because they are imbued with experience, real experience, and are not fantastical.
It is this constant striving for the beauty of reality that is at the core of i.m. ruzz's artistic vision. It can be found in every photo he takes, not just those that make up labours in the fields of sorrow; it is his mission to contravene the metaphysical silliness of 'inner beauty' and the glossy banality of ideal 'outer beauty,' and labours in the fields of sorrow is i.m. ruzz's manifesto. In it one will find countless instances of true beauty. Deep pores and pox scarred cheeks. Pebbly skin and bikini line razor rash. Hairy arms and stubbly armpits. Wrinkles and baggy eyes. The pain of a life that means death, and the sorrow of living to die. This is where the real beauty of being human lies, and it is cause for celebration that there are artists who can see that beauty and reveal it to us.
If there is any sadness to be found in the pages of labours in the fields of sorrow, it is that i.m. ruzz's art, like the prose of Virginia Woolf or the films of Terrence Malick, doesn't belong to yesterday or today or even tomorrow, but to a day we may never know. Most are afraid to find the beauty that resides in experience, preferring the safety of the artistic ideal. So until that day after the day after tomorrow there will be no truth in beauty - at least not for the masses. Truth in beauty will remain an underground movement that attracts artists like i.m. ruzz, who aspire to integrity rather than riches, and those viewers who are brave enough to face the beautiful decay of the human body unflinchingly. Only for them can there be truth in beauty.
Brad Simkulet, Author ( Existence Costs )
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