JOHN RUDDY EXHIBIT -CELEBRATING A LIFE WELL LIVED

His time in the Jersey City arts scene was similarly energetic. Ruddy never aspired to be shown in a staid gallery. Instead, he gravitated to the places where the action was. He was deeply involved in the experimental arts movement that coalesced around the studios at 660 Grand Street; he imparted some rowdy flavor to the annual Studio Tours; his work hung at the late and lamented LITM, a bar and restaurant on Newark Avenue that shared his exploratory values. (Morin was, for many years, curator at LITM.)  Wherever he exhibited, he offered a counterpoint to the restrained palette — with its muted blues, slate greys and rust-browns — of artists working in the Hudson County post-industrial style. Even the attention-grabbing hues favored by our prominent street artists were too modest for him. Instead, Ruddy arrests the eye with striking juxtapositions that approach the saturation of day-glo. His lasting contribution to Jersey City arts might be his demonstration that aggressive use of color is no impediment to harmony or storytelling.

Jersey City Firemen from Engine 9

Not all of these paintings work. Some of them are so busy and so bright that they become the visual equivalent of a blaring boombox. The image of Buddhas contemplating a smoke-belching oil rig feels more than a bit like an ironist’s political cartoon. But Ruddy’s art is so boisterously delivered that even his weaker pieces are never anything less than fun. And the stronger ones are hypnotic in their fantastic intensity. Shrouded Middle Eastern women flee black helicopters and grasping, glove-like formations of flames. Indian dancers kick up their heels around a shadowed cauldron. A deity with a skull on a staff and a noose in his hand stands atop a menacing pink bull. Throughout the show, Ruddy demonstrates an interest in the human body in motion — and a solid understanding of how to pose those bodies in ways that suggest they mean business. He could have designed some terrific action figures if he’d wanted to.

The substantial turnout at the opening event on Sunday, April 3 was a testament to Ruddy’s well-earned local popularity. I was pleased to see that alongside the usual arts-scene politicians and bespectacled aesthetes (your correspondent included) were, John’s family and several Jersey City firefighters. Even in death, John Ruddy was drawing unexpected connections.