Painter and writer Ruben Nusz (pronounced news) (he/him) was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the son of a carpenter and a bookkeeper. He has exhibited paintings and sculptures at galleries and museums across the United States, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego). His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Nusz has received a number of awards and fellowships including a Visual Arts Fellowship from the McKnight Foundation. His work has been reviewed online and in print by, among others, MPR, Hyperallergic, Coolhunting, and Artforum. Recent exhibitions include How to Look Wrong at Weinstein-Hammons Gallery and Pas de Deux at Dreamsong.
He is also co-founder of LOCATION Books, an independent publisher that provides contemporary artists pportunities to produce new work in book form. LOCATION artist books are found in notable art libraries throughout the United States, including the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), SFMOMA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Midway Contemporary Art. Recently, the project has been relaunched as LOCATION-BKS, focusing on mass-market text-based paperbacks by artists.
Nusz’s writing has been featured online and in various print journals, including The Walker Art Center Magazine, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and The Georgia Review. An essay he wrote on the work of painter Hartmut Austin is featured in the book Here r More, available at Printed Matter.
From 2024-2025 he worked with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and Miles Johnson on the art direction and color theory for the Bon Iver E.P. SABLE, and the L.P. SABLE, fABLE, developing an official Pantone color (Bon Iver fABLE Salmon) in the process.
He is represented by Weinstein-Hammons Gallery and lives and works in the Twin Cities.
