“Ruby is one of the main proponents of what we might call the most current form of realism; that is, of creations that are understood in their entirety if we have identified, deciphered, and possibly ordered into a system of meaning the signs scattered across their surfaces and in the pictures’ textures. This realism does not work by representing the world, unlike photography and video, although it does sometimes make use of those media. Ruby integrates photography into his bleach collages…He expresses this realism by recovering and altering elements taken from reality itself” (Philippe Dagen quoted in, Sterling Ruby Paris, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, Paris, 2016, p. 112).