- Venue
- Yorkshire Sculpture Park www.ysp.co.uk - until 04.01.15
- Location
- Yorkshire
A hitherto unrepresented artist in the UK, von Rydingsvard is newly re-presented by a survey show at YSP through sculptures of all scales. Hers are deeply physical sculptures that make no attempt to hide their laborious and quasi-ritualistic construction. The accumulation of cut 2×2 or 4×4 lengths of planed cedar wood takes modular production to the nth degree. There is a distinct satisfaction in knowing or believing at least, that the timbers traversing each strata of the multilayered sculptures run throughout. In other words, any hollows or cavities are explicit. If they are hidden, it is done with cunning and guise. But one suspects there is a truth to materials rationale operating behind these resolutely analogue and old school sculptures.
They posses an archaic quality and their part by part blocky construction and graphite encrusted surfaces bring to mind the die cast letters of traditional typeset printing. It almost becomes a kind of tautology with processed wood made tree again. The gnarled surfaces of many of the sculptures can’t help but evoke associations of the natural world, ranging from spongy cork to barnacle encrusted rocks at the tide’s edge. Often, screw holes used in the jointing and laminating process scar the wood, like the long abandoned tunnels of medieval woodworm, thereby giving the sculptures the patina of age. This is apparent in Krasawica II, a horizontal composition of four giant lifesize bowls, whose openings can only just be seen into.
Blackened Word is more immersive and apparently emerged from the transcription of a passage of writing. Slightly sinister with craggy knots, and interspersed by various hollows and fissures, it is a geological transformation of the handwritten scrawl at its cursive origins. One need not know the exact words to sense the anxiety conveyed. Indeed, von Rydingsvard has spoken of surface “as a kind of landscape be that psychological or emotional.”
Accompanying the sculptures are half a dozen drawings of considerable beauty. They are intensely evocative of her sculptures, in the same way that Brancusi’s photographs somehow confer a sense of how it is to experience his sculptures, rather than simply mirroring what they look like. Each was brought to life by combining threads, fabric and handmade paper. As one looks more, the realisation dawns that the threads and strips of fabric are frequently integrated into the paper. This is papermaking as an act of drawing, whereby the threads sometimes pierce the paper pulp and at other times they lurk, partially obscured by a translucent milky glaze of razor thin paper.
This willingness to embrace diverse materials also extends to her sculptures, which can incorporate animal intestines and stomachs, as well as paper that has been cast onto cedar formers. von Rydingsvard considers this expansion vital, confirming how she “deliberately sometimes chooses materials that feel diametrically opposite of the cedar because this puts a wrench in my thinking.”
The drawings are complemented by an intriguing room with various smaller works, photographs documenting her studio and making process, (www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net/site/process/) as well as two short but informative films.
It is a strong show, that being accompanied by Ai Wei Wei’s sculptures in the chapel, demands a summer visit to God’s country.
