Gryphon Rue (b. New York, NY) is an artist, composer, and musician.
Rue’s music, constructed of complex patterns derived from singing saw, harmonium, and custom synthesizers, discloses a fascination with electroacoustic mimetic potential — the ability to suggest biological actions, molecular events, possession, nourishment — and is above all, made with people’s pleasure in mind.
Rue has performed and lectured internationally at venues such as de Young Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Hepworth Wakefield, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, The Shigeko Kubota Foundation, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, Roulette Mixology Festival, New Media Art & Sound Summit, Take Off Festival, Festival Hongerige Wolf, i = u Festival, Kathy Acker Awards.
Rue’s album A Spirit Appears to a Pair of Lovers will be released August 26 on Not Not Fun Records, and features ten videos made by eight intergenerational collaborators. Other releases include Foliage of Caves (Soap Library), North of The Future with Merche Blasco (Astral Editions), Resounding: North of The Future (Tiger Sushi), and Love is a Grasshopper Nearby as Vertical Foliage (CAMP Editions). Rue performs in the light and sound duo Rue Bainbridge (Wintering, de Young Museum).
Rue hosts Earmark, a program of long form conversations with composers and sound artists on Montez Press Radio.
Rue’s Strange Attractor (Inventory Press & Ballroom Marfa) is an artist book exploring the uncertainties and poetics of networks, environmental events, and sound. Among its many contributors are Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Channa Horwitz, Bernadette Mayer, Haroon Mirza, Beatrice Gibson, Lucky Dragons, and Merlin Sheldrake.
In 2021 Rue organized exhibitions and performances at D R O N E in Tribeca (drone1hudson.com); curated Buddhist Bubblegum: Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell at Printed Matter/St Marks; as well as the monumental photomontage/window exhibition Clayton Patterson: Beauty Mark.
Videos are distributed by The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and collaborations with Robert Buck via Electronic Arts Intermix.
Rue is a recipient of a Roulette 2022-2023 Commission, made possible with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation.
gryphonrue@gmail.com
SOLO DISCOGRAPHY
2022. A Spirit Appears to a Pair of Lovers (Cassette & Digital album), Not Not Fun
2020. Foliage of Caves (Cassette & Digital album), Soap Library
2018. Google Portrait (ft. Dean Wareham) (single), Tiger Sushi
2016. Google Portrait (ft. Joakim) (EP), Tiger Sushi
2015. Guilt Vacation as El Tryptophan (Vinyl LP), self-released
DUO DISCOGRAPHY
2022. Gryphon Rue & Merche Blasco, Resounding: North of The Future (Cassette & Digital album), Tiger Sushi
2021. Gryphon Rue & Merche Blasco, North of The Future (Cassette & Digital album), Astral Editions
2020. Vertical Foliage, Love is a Grasshopper Nearby (Digital album), CAMP Editions
RADIO PROJECTS
2022. Cosmos; a Modular Circus on Strange Attractor (audio drama), Short Waves / Long Distance, Co-presented by Wave Farm, Montez Press Radio, and The North American Shortwave Association.
2021– Earmark, a program of long form conversations with composers and sound artists on Montez Press Radio
FILM & VIDEO
2021. Clayton Patterson, Elsa Rensaa, and Duke (161 Essex Street, 1987, finished 2021)
2020. Love is a Grasshopper Nearby, music by Vertical Foliage, 3:06, black and white, stereo sound, 16 mm
2020. Chaotic Repeller Distance-Towers, dir. James Powers, 4:22, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2020. Rue Bainbridge: Here Come The Wormholes, 5:12 min, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2020. Rue Bainbridge: Biome, 3:33 min, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2018. Rue Bainbridge: Holocene Jitterbug, 7:59 min, color, UHD video, stereo sound
2018. LICENSE, with Robert Buck, 11:50 min, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video, distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
2018. Google Portrait, with Benton C Bainbridge, Series of Digital Media HD videos in Singular Editions, silent, running times vary
2018. Google Portrait (ft. Christine Sun Kim & Dean Wareham), 4:20 min, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2016. Google Portrait (ft. Joakim), pixel painting by Benton C Bainbridge, 4:20 min, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2016. Beethoven for Relaxation, dir. Max Grey, 2:58, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video
2016. Insect Express, dir. Emily Pelstring, 3:25, color, stereo sound, Digital Media HD video. Screenings: Ottawa International Animation Festival (honorable mention for Best Canadian Animation), Feinaki Animation Week, Beijing, Bad Women, Bad People Gallery, Los Angeles
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021. Friends & Family, Magenta Plains, New York
2013. Delusions, Rox Gallery, New York
SOUNDTRACKS
2018. Gropius Memory Palace, Ben Thorp Brown, World Premiere: Saint Louis Art Museum, European Premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam, North American Premiere: New York Film Festival
2012. Eucalyptus (1940), Black Mobile with Hole (1954), Bosquet is the Best Best (1946). Calder Foundation website, filmed by King & Partners
TEXTS & PUBLICATIONS
2021. Duchamp Coping Techniques, The Lacanian Review (issue 11, The Art of Singularities)
2021. The Location of Serenity, mission statement for D R O N E, New York
2021. Clayton Patterson: Beauty Mark, Printed Matter at Swiss Institute, New York
2020. Calder & Varèse excerpted from Calder and Sound, in Sounds Lasting and Leaving,
Luxembourg & Dayan (digital exhibition catalogue)
2019. Strange Attractor (editor, author of introduction and essays on Elias Sime, Mark Lombardi, and Douglas Ross; conversation with mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake); includes contributions and dialogues with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Thomas Ashcraft, Robert Buck, Alexander Calder, Beatrice Gibson, Phillipa Horan, Channa Horwitz, Lucky Dragons, Herbert Matter, Haroon Mirza, novelist Chloe Aridjis, economic sociologist Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Douglas Kahn, and poet Bernadette Mayer. Pub. Inventory Press & Ballroom Marfa
2019. Ballet-Object Animatics, in Calder Stories, Centro Botín (exhibition catalogue)
2018. Storm Tracker (score), in Dis-assemb-blies 08, Will Work For Good (magazine)
2018. Calder y el sonido in Alexander Calder: Teatro de Encuentros, Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires (exhibition catalogue)
2014. PostcART: Jay Miriam, Contemporary Lynx (online magazine)
2013. Calder and Sound in Alexander Calder: Avant-Garde in Motion, Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (exhibition
catalogue)
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2021. Buddhist Bubblegum: Esoteric Buddhism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell, Book launch for author Matt Marble and performance by Singing Tractors, Printed Matter/St Marks, New York
2021. The Location of Serenity, D R O N E, New York
2021. Clayton Patterson: Beauty Mark, Printed Matter/St Marks, New York
2019. Calder Stories, Curator & editor of music for animated ballets,
Centro Botin
2017. Symbol Rush, Clayton Gallery and Outlaw Art Museum, New York
2017. Strange Attractor, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX
2016. The Sump (now H0L0) event series, New York
2016. Performances of Earle Brown’s Calder Piece, 1963–66, Curator.
Calder Foundation, Earle Brown Foundation, Talujon Percussion Quartet, Friends Seminary, New York
2015. Eureka, sound installations. Pace Gallery, New York
2013. They might well have been remnants of the boat, Calder Foundation, The High Line Hotel, New York
2012. Oh, you mean cellophane and all that crap, Calder Foundation, The Mckittrick Hotel, New York
PRESENTATIONS
2021. Calder’s Music: How The Mobile Changed The Sonic Arts, Calder-Picasso, de Young Museum, San Francisco
2019. Calder and Sound, Index Festival, The Hepworth Wakefield, England
2019. Panel discussion, The Lacanian Unconscious: A No-Brainer, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, New York
2018. Calder and Sound, Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
2018. Rue Bainbridge, Center for Visual Music Symposium, Sonoma State University
2018. Playing The Beetles, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Utrecht
2013. Calder and Sound, Avant-Garde in Motion, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
SELECT PERFORMANCES
2021. Rue Bainbridge: Wintering, de Young Museum
2020. Rue Bainbridge: I’ll Wear a Mask For You, New Media Art & Sound Summit
2020. Rue Bainbridge: Mixology Festival, Roulette, Brooklyn
2019. Rue Bainbridge, Index Festival, The Hepworth Wakefield
2019. Rue Bainbridge, Pace Gallery, New York
2019. Kathy Acker Awards, Theater for the New City, New York
2019. Rue Bainbridge: Woolgathering Continuum, Hauser & Wirth LA
2018. Rue Bainbridge, Shigeko Kubota Foundation, New York
2017. Take Off Festival with Wouter van Reek, Amsterdam
2016. Festival Hongerige Wolf, Groningen
2014. i = u festival, Brooklyn, NY
2013. Ensemble piece Vertical Foliage Orchestra in Calder Foundation’s They might well have been remnants of the boat, Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, New York
2012. Ensemble piece Playing The Beetles ft. Dave Nuss (NNCK), Gabrielle Herbst, Aaron Moore, Daniel Fishkin, Odetta Hartman, in Calder Foundation’s Oh, you mean cellophane and all that crap, Mckittrick Hotel, New York
2008. Concert and Awareness Tour with Peter Yarrow, Vietnamese cities and provinces to uplift and raise money for victims of Agent Orange
RESIDENCIES
2019. Rue Bainbridge: Andrew Freedman Home, New York
2019. Rue Bainbridge: CultureHub, New York
2017. Rue Bainbridge: Public Works Department, Governor’s Island, New York
2016. Gryphon Rue: NDSM Treehouse, Amsterdam
GUEST APPEARANCES
2019. Eliot Krimsky, Wave in Time LP, Pretty Purgatory (Singing saw)
2018. Dean Wareham Vs. Cheval Sombre LP, Gotta Groove (Singing saw)
2016. High Water, Crush LP, Other People (Lyrics, guitar)
2012. Odetta Hartman, Tally Marks EP, Self-released (Singing saw)
OTHER COLLABORATIONS
2018. Sharon Gal, Feel the Noise, for large ensemble of electric guitars
2014. Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Benno, Busy Day, Droit de Cités
1997. Gail Gilbert, Folding Time, Thread Waxing Space, New York
HOMEPAGE
Music by Vertical Foliage, Love is a Grasshopper Nearby, CAMP Editions, 2020. Film distributed by Film Makers’ Cooperative.
Big Apple Circus, New York City, 1987
Les Casaly (Guillaume Dufresnoy and Mireille Fenwick), casting cradle
Clown Gordoon, with snake puppet
Dolly Jacobs, aerialist in the rings
Robbie Libbon, performance director in tuxedo
Michael Christensen, clown escorting Dolly Jacobs out of the ring
Anna May, elephant
Ben Williams, elephant trainer
Paul Binder, ringmaster
Vanessa Thomas, riding Anna May
