This Must Be The Place

Playground Detroit
Detroit, MI

July- August 2019

This Must Be The Place calls attention to the interconnectivity of the earth’s complex systems through a process-driven body of work made by tracing elements and textures from the physical environment. By working outside in public spaces, Rutt allows often-overlooked aspects of architecture and landscape to dictate each composition. This physical engagement with place positions the project in close conversation with the urgency of climate action and the lived experience of navigating contemporary environments.

The paintings reflect the complexity of modern society and the natural world, examining questions of access and belonging. Improvisational mark-making gathered from each site lays the groundwork for the compositions, later masked by contained shapes that create layered tensions between control and chaos. The resulting works often read as collages of clean and messy, textural and flat color blocks—visual dichotomies that echo the paradoxes present in both human-made and natural systems. Through this approach, Rutt confronts her own contradictions in order to imagine futures rooted in social justice rather than green capitalism.

This Must Be The Place is installed off-site at a film studio. The experience takes place across two rooms. Visitors first enter a quiet viewing space with seating and a looping projection of process videos, offering a glimpse into the artist’s methods of working directly within public environments. This prelude situates the paintings within their originating landscapes before viewers pass through a long hallway and emerge into the primary gallery.

The gallery, a room with infinity walls, is a seamless expanse where floor, wall, and ceiling blur into a continuous surface. Without clear perceptual boundaries, the room creates a disorienting sense of suspension—as though the works exist within an atmospheric field rather than a conventional gallery. The paintings extend beyond traditional wall display: some hang freely in the center of the space, others rest directly on the floor, while one composition snakes upward from floor to ceiling. Living plants and a tree punctuate the installation, creating an environment that feels at once grounded in the material world and slightly surreal. Within this constructed landscape, the paintings operate not only as images but as spatial elements, inviting viewers to move through the work as though navigating a shifting terrain.

The process video viewing room