Art on Fire: From Rodin’s Bombed Thinker to Ruhwald’s Ceramic Sculptures

Anders Ruhwald Weather Thinker, 2017 Glazed earthenware 57.75 x 16.25 x 16.75 in. 146.7 x 41.3 x 42.6 cm (AR-MB1016)(Courtesy: Moran Moran)

How art evolves over time? In 1970, Rodin’s Thinker was bombed outside The Cleveland Art Museum, as a protest against the Vietnam War. The Museum then decided to re-install the sculpture unrestored, inscribing a political manifestation into its narrative. Anders Ruhwald explores this story in his new exhibition, “The Hand is the Mind is the Bomb that Blows,” on view at Moran Moran in Los Angeles. Boom!

The exhibition features a new series of 25 large ceramic sculptures. On the surface, the works focus on one of the most rudimentary interactions – an artist’s hand shaping a material. Through the artist’s hands and the process of firing, matter solidifies into meaning. Ruhwald created these objects that took months of focused and intensive studio work, it’s a result of a complete immersion and embracement of clay’s metamorphic nature as a material. There exists a rare physicality to his process as he transforms tons of clay and gallons of glaze using minimal tools, putting them through numerous firings.

Central to the gallery installation are four “Index” objects that Ruhwald has idiosyncratically named as : Blow, Person, Mass, and Coil. Each sits in one of the four corners of the artist’s rectangular exhibition layout, becoming references to the remaining 21 sculptures. These index objects outline central aspects of his work:  Person is the human space, Blow- the perforated surface, Mass the dense material , whereas Coil becomes his time/technique, with which he creates these fabulous objects. For Ruhwald, these pieces reflect the nature of sculpture and how the meaning of an artwork transcends with time.

“The Hand is the Mind is the Bomb that Blows” makes visible an amalgamation of human and matter through a range of open-ended explorations the artist puts in motion. The sculptures juxtapose between the figurative and the abstract, allowing a sense of body and material to appear at the same time. Anders Ruhwald (b. 1974, Randers, Denmark) lives and works in Detroit, MI.

The exhibition will be on view from September 9, through October 7,2017 at Moran Moran, 937 N. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069.