Ruth Hardinger is a New York-based artist and environmental activist. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies, magna cum laude, from Hunter College and a year-long MacDowell Travelling Scholarship as well as an IIE Grant to Mexico, administered by the Fulbright Foundation. Since 1975 she has exhibited internationally at such galleries as John Weber, Hal Bromm, Max Huchinson, Richard Green, Lesley Heller, Salon Zürcher, Sideshow, Philippe Staib, Bill Bace, and David & Schweitzer, along with institutions like Artists Space, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery (SUNY), Islip Museum of Art, Sculpture Center, Museo Reina Sophia, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, and Hudson River Museum.

For nearly five decades, Ruth Hardinger has been an "artist's artist," well known to her peers on the New York art scene, while exhibiting steadily in commercial galleries and nonprofit art centers, both in the United States and abroad. She has garnered grants and awards from such institutions as Artists Space, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rauschenberg Foundation. Her work has been analyzed by such noted critics as Stephen Westfall, Kara Rooney, Amy Lipton, Richard Vine, Grace Glueck, and Robert C. Morgan.

Ruth Hardinger has long explored the dialectic between physicality and spirit. Her deft handling of "poor" materials—concrete, string, cardboard, graphite, rope, even dried foodstuff—suggests a kind of transubstantiation, an impulse to transcend the mundane, through artistry, and evoke the eternal, the sublime. This theme is echoed in Hardinger's passionate environmental concerns and in her reverence for both Classical and Pre-Columbian art. “Transcending Fields” invites visitors to follow a path from room to room, as though from shrine to shrine on a private pilgrimage. In each space, they will contemplate a different configuration of the abstract artist's human-scaled concrete sculptures, tabletop plasters, and large graphite drawings.

This exhibition will offer an overview of the artist work with a focus on her pursuit of spiritual purity and enlightenment. The installation plan will be experiential. From the entrance, people will follow a designated route, reminiscent of an ancient spiritual pathway. At various points, the show will evoke a sanctuary, ritual site, or burial place. The visitors will enter different chambers, containing works curated thematically for each individual space.

Please visit Mana Contemporary for more information.

Please visit CultureTrashesNature for Ruth’s environmental panels videos.