Six sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard ’75 were recently on view at the prestigious Giardino della Marinaressain Venice as an official Collateral Event at the 56th annual Venice Biennale. The exhibition closed on November 22, 2015.
This was Rydingsvard’s first exhibition in Italy, according to ArtDaily.org ; it is an extension of a 2014 exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England, which featured more than 40 works of drawing and sculpture. The Venice exhibition was curated by Peter Murray and created in association with the Municipalata di Venezia Murano Burano, coordinated by Ambiente e Arte, and supported by the American European Friends of Ursula von Rydingsvard, Luciano Giubbilei and Galerie Lelong.
Von Rydingsvard has been creating her cedar-wood sculptures for 30 years, using large-scale constructions to explore emotional and psychological themes. “I’ve always had the urge to surround the body,” she said in an interview with Art+Auction. “There is something psychological that happens when you are surrounded that’s different from just looking at something at a distance. That’s not to say experience can’t be moving, but I feel you can grip psychologically in a more intense way when you’re surrounded, although I don’t necessarily know where these urges come from.”
Von Rydingsvard’s sculptures are in held in the permanent collections of more than 30 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, Storm King Art Center, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. She was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Von Rydingsvard currently lives and works in Brooklyn. You can view an Art 21 interview with her about the project here.