New photography by Jeff and Joshua Ball - RuiNation: the Rust-Belt Remains November 4, 2011

New photography by Jeff and Joshua Ball - RuiNation: the Rust-Belt Remains

November 4 at 6:00pm - November 30 at 2:00pm
Opening Reception November 4, 2011 from 6-9pm

Sellars Project Space is proud to present a series of new photographs by brother Jeff and Joshua Ball in an exhibition titled, RuiNation: The Rust-Belt Remains.This exhibition opens with a reception for the artists on Friday, November 4th from 6 - 9 p.m. during Denver's city-wide Super First Friday in celebration of Denver's Art Week. The artists will be in attendance. This exhibition continues through November 30th, 2011.

“RuiNation” a photography exhibit by two Mid-West Brothers who see beauty in the Rust-Belt’s urban decay to open at Sellers Project Space this November

Join brothers, Jeff and Joshua Ball, November 4th from 6-9 p.m. at Sellars Project Space located at 4383 Tennyson Street for their new exhibit, RuiNation, The Rust-Belt Remains.

The Industrial Revolution is officially over. After an era of cultural optimism and pure industrial might, the United States no longer finds itself in a booming manufacturing-based economy. Many plants have closed, supply lines slowed and our once-proud workforce has faded into office cubicles and super-store checkout lines. The revolution is dead and the result is a sprawling countryside peppered with barren smokestacks and blackened factory framing. Within that imagery lived the inspiration for a project that would ultimately become RuiNation.

In early 2010, two brothers, Denver based Jeff Ball and Toledo, Ohio based Joshua Ball, looked at what was happening to the nation’s industrial infrastructure and saw more than just rusted steel and crumbling brick, they saw art. The brothers grew up in Toledo, Ohio, which has long lived in the mechanical shadow of industrial Detroit. For a majority of the 20th century, blue-collar cities like Toledo relied heavily on the auto industry and the manufacturing jobs that it produced. In the past few decades, the industrial Mid-West has witnessed countless businesses leave, factories close and middle-class jobs disappear. The “rust-belt” is now a mere shadow of its former self and while the industry is gone, many of its ruins still stand.

Where many see twisted metal, rotting timbers and concrete dust, the brothers saw an opportunity to capture the nontraditional beauty of that decay. These long-lost pieces of the industrial Midwest are a testament to our country’s history; they stoked the fires that fueled the engines that built a nation. Now that the revolution is dead, those pieces of rusting rebar and crumbling masonry now stand as both monuments and ruins to a nation that continues to survive. The remains of the rust-belt remain.

The images in this collection are not intended to simply remind us of better days when a factory worker could provide their family with a piece of the American dream. They were created to remind us of our potential, our collective drive to build a better world and to create wondrous things that never existed before. This is the essence of art, and the inspiration for this exhibit.

Sellars Project Space is located in the Historic Berkeley Highlands Neighborhood of North Denver at 4383 Tennyson Street. For more information or directions call 720.475.1182 or visit http://www.sellarsprojectspace.com/.

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Official Website: http://www.sellarsprojectspace.com