eric ruby
rinky dink

september 18 - november 14, 2026

EVENTS

ARTISTS’ RECEPTION
Friday, September 18, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm 
Wege Gallery 

GALLERY TALK WITH ERIC RUBY
Saturday, September 19, 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Wege Gallery

GALLERY HOURS
Open Monday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

The Wege Gallery is proud to present the work of Eric Ruby in RINKY DINK. Featuring photographs taken over several years in the midwestern United States, RINKY DINK leads us into spaces public and private, rural, fancy, moth-eaten and ultimately cinematic. Taken in together, the work reveals a penchant for wandering and admiration for the work that people do and the lives they craft for themselves.  

In Norman Bryson’s classic book on still life painting, “Looking at the Overlooked,” he analyzes “The Battle between Carnival and Lent,” (1589) the well-known painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bryson breaks down the relationship between abundance and scarcity, framing it as the natural rhythm that shapes agrarian culture. “When abundance comes, it is that of the land, for the people who live from the land; a banquet of the world, rather than the affluence of private tables.” The characters and scenes in Ruby’s work richly reflect this ethos.  

RINKY DINK, or what is vintage, shoddy or outmoded is something nostalgic, pointing to that which never cared to be slick and modern. A cheap show or a threadbare band; RINKY DINK is lively and unpolished, like Bruegel’s figures. In Ruby’s photographs we see the accumulated evidence of people making something out of what they have and making it generously for each other.  

Eric Ruby (American, b. 1987) is a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Ruby’s work explores themes of travel, nomadic living, and the contemporary resonance of counterculture and utopian ideas. His debut monograph, Stone Soup, was published by Nocturno Books in 2025. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Die Zeit, The Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, among many other publications.