Ursula von Rydingsvard

accomplishment that rewards careful looking—an impression of a large mass accrues texture upon discovering gaps, punctures, and orifices smaller than a human hand. “The transitions claim a kind of movement, and I have the privilege of detouring these movements, making some larger than others. The movements for which I have an infinite amount of admiration are those on the surface of the ocean; for all of the world’s ocean surface, no one wave is like any other,” von Rydingsvard has shared.

In addition to the works’ physicality, von Rydingsvard places the pieces in subtle tension with the surfaces they encounter. The largest wall-based work, OBUDOWAĆ (2020-21) evokes the language of painting through the artist’s creation of negative space achieved by leaving four-by-four cedar beams—the material she has been working with for over 50 years—untouched. Von Rydingsvard gives Polish titles to a majority of her sculptures, and OBUDOWAĆ  [“rebuild”] is the first large sculpture produced after von Rydingsvard’s brief absence from the studio due to the pandemic.  

A new human-scale bronze work will be on view for the first time. Cast in bronze from a wood model, Bowl with Fingers evokes a form familiar to the artist’s oeuvre while the bronze compels von Rydinsgvard to consider the surface as a painting with each brush of the patina.

Von Rydingsvard’s bold assertion in commandeering any available space is similarly expressed in her drawings which has evolved to become a large part of her practice over the past two years. As von Rydingsvard never drafts her sculptures on paper before carving them on wood, these rarely exhibited works rendered in charcoal and graphite on paper stand alone as a refulgent imprint of the artist’s expanding curiosity; a raw wonderment that recalls the artist’s roots in Post-Minimalism.