Ursula von Rydingsvard

2007

Internationally recognized for her massive carved cedar sculpture, Ursula von Rydingsvard creates a dialogue between intimate gesture and architecture in the highly articulated and complex surfaces of her work. Born in Germany and based in New York since 1973, von Rydingsvard has established a unique voice in the sculptural dialogue that values the mark of the hand and through its scale celebrates an almost archaic monumentality. The first exhibition of her work in the Pacific Northwest, the museum presents a major sculpture, Pod Pachą, and a series of dynamic new drawings completed during the artist's Italian residency as a recipient of a 2007 Rome Prize. This exhibition will be the first time the artist has ever shown her drawings.

A mechanized work, Pod Pachą is in a continuous state of motion as it lifts and settles, lifts and settles in an almost humanized gesture suggesting breathing. Hand-carved and rubbed with pigments to create a continuous interplay of light and shadow, the room-sized work stands off the floor on a dozen legs that both acknowledge and deny its great weight and serve to further animate its sense of being. Pod Pachą is both temporal and timeless in its swelling impermeable cedar mass and complex flickering surfaces.

Curated by Bruce Guenther