Night Gallery at FOG Design+Art Fair
Sarah Blaustein Collective D-1, 2025 ink and acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 in (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
For FOG Design+Art 2025, Night Gallery is delighted to present new work by Tomashi Jackson and Brie Ruais, two represented artists from our program. Both artists subvert craft traditions—ceramics for Ruais, collage for Jackson—as they create bold forms that unite elements of painting and sculpture. Cycles of life, death, and creative rebirth become major themes.
Ruais’s process begins when she places 130 pounds of commercial clay—the weight of her own body—on the ground. She kneels atop it and spreads the material into radial shapes that retain impressions of her knees and feet. She tears the structure into 12-20 pieces, then glazes and fires each. As water evaporates, the piece loses significant mass. Ruais’s resulting, wall-hung forms negotiate between delicacy and strength. They suggest the fragile relationship between humans and our environment.
In newer pieces, the artist references her own family. Petaling Within Mother (2024), which resembles a radiating flower, honors the artist’s late mother and alludes to the relationship between maternal inheritance and the natural world. Throughout other works, Ruais evokes a chrysalis and insect metamorphoses. In the face of loss, Ruais’s work argues for creative transformation.
Brie Ruais, Petaling Within Mother, 130lbs, 2024, glazed stoneware, hardware, 73" x 75" x 3"
In her multimedia paintings, Tomashi Jackson integrates an ashen paste made from burned Los Angeles palm leaves, a material that directly engages with the landscape and history of the city she grew up in. Her work reflects a process of transformation—both of the material itself and the act of creating—as she draws from Josef Albers's color theory to explore geometric experimentation and research. Jackson’s approach embodies the ritual of art-making as a means to navigate personal and collective grief, braiding together images of joy and trauma.
Both Ruais and Jackson use their respective mediums to mourn recent losses, reimagining art as a life-affirming ritual. Their works become sites for shared bereavement and renewal.
Tomashi Jackson, Get On Up (Women Double Dutching/ Two Friends Embracing), 2024, acrylic, yule quarry marble dust paste, and paper bags on black canvas with brass hooks and grommets on a handcrafted wood awning structure, 62 1/2" x 97" x 9"
In addition to this presentation, Night Gallery will exhibit new paintings by Bay Area artist Sarah Blaustein, who mounted her solo exhibition Overture with us in September 2024. The artist uses domestic tools such as rags and house painters' brushes to make vibrant marks across wet canvas. Blaustein's use of water embodies fluidity, presence, and the constant ebb and flow of creation.
Together, these three artists offer a profound meditation on the impermanence of life and the enduring power of creation.
Tomashi Jackson (b. 1980, Houston, TX) received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2010; earned her MS in Art, Culture and Technology from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 2012; and received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale University School of Art in 2016. She was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, was a 2019 Resident Artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and received the 2023 Rappaport Prize, the 2022 Roy R. Neuberger Prize, and a 2020 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Jackson has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus; and Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw. She has participated in group shows at the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among many others. Jackson’s work belongs in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art, and Cooper Union, and has been a visiting artist at New York University. Jackson lives and works between Cambridge, MA, and New York City.
Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) earned her MFA from Columbia University, New York, NY. She has exhibited her work at institutions including Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin, Germany; Musée d'art de Joliette, Joliette, Québec, Canada; and Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA. She has had solo exhibitions at Albertz Benda Gallery, New York, NY; Cooper Cole, Toronto, ON; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, NY; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and among others. Ruais's work is in the permanent collections of Burger COLLECTION, Hong Kong; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Past awards and residencies include the Montello Foundation Residency, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, and The Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant. The artist’s work has been written about in publications including Artforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Ruais lives and works in Santa Fe, NM.
Sarah Blaustein (b. 1982, San Francisco East Bay, CA). Blaustein is a visual artist living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recent solo exhibitions include Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art San José, San José, CA; private showing and salon at PACE Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; and Hesse Flatow Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been included in group shows at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, NY; and Hesse Flatow East Gallery, Amagansett, NY. In January 2023, art historian Alexander Nemerov (Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA) spoke about her work at a private exhibition The Call and salon hosted by Jennifer Stockman (New York, NY). In September 2023, Blaustein showed her work at a private salon To Radiate hosted by Berggruen Gallery at Casa Cipriani (New York, NY) where art historian Laura D. Corey (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY), spoke about her work and Helen Hatch (MOMA, New York, NY) moderated the talk. In June and December 2023, she painted at the American Academy of Rome through their Artist and Scholars Program (Rome, Italy). Blaustein has exhibited her work at The Armory Show (New York, NY), Art Basel Miami Beach (Miami, FL), Dallas Art Fair (Dallas, TX), Fog Design + Art (San Francisco, CA) and NADA Miami (Miami, FL). In 2023, she exhibited her work in Trodden Path a group show at Hesse Flatow East (Amagansett, NY) and The Big Picture a group show at Night Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). In 2024, she showed her work in Abstract Perspectives and California Gold group shows at Berggruen Gallery (San Francisco, CA). Blaustein presented her first solo-show Overture with Night Gallery in September 2024 (Los Angeles, CA). In December 2024, Blaustein presented work at Art Basel Miami Beach with Berggruen Gallery and exhibited work in a two-person booth at NADA Miami with Hesse Flatow.
FOG Design+Art Preview Gala
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
4–10 p.m. (tiered entry)
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
General Admission
Thursday, January 23–Saturday, January 25, 2025:
11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, January 26, 2025:
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
Night Gallery is located at 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021; the gallery’s website can be found here for more information about Night Gallery’s artists and their exhibits. For additional information about the FOG Design+Art fair please visit their site here. FOG Design+Art can be found on Instagram, and Facebook.
