Over the course of five decades, Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942) has created monumental, even imposing sculptures that have an undercurrent of vulnerability. Although she has experimented with a wide variety of mediums, since the mid-1970s she has worked primarily with cedar, a soft, malleable material that can be easily manipulated to form abstract shapes. Each sculpture begins with an outline drawn directly onto the studio floor, and within this shape individual four-by-four beams of cedar are drawn, cut, stacked, and glued together. Her process is both additive and subtractive, and each cumulative layer is an intuitive response to the one before, as though the sculpture, according to the artist, “at least partially…determines its own destiny.” Indeed, von Rydingsvard strives to occupy “the intermediary space that really has no answers, that really has no specific goal…a place that’s more volatile…that isn’t so certain.”

Ursula von Rydingsvard: States of Becoming is the first exhibition to explore the artist’s improvisational manner of working and long-standing practice of returning to sculptures or deliberately reworking years later. Since 2007 she has expanded her sculptural vocabulary, collaborating with the papermaking workshop Dieu Donné to produce highly dimensional pieces cast from abaca and handmade linen paper embellished with cotton, lace, and other organic materials. Like her sculptures, the works on paper embody a certain vulnerability and elusiveness, the amorphous, wet pulp fraying at the edges. Tracing von Rydingsvard’s works of the last two decades in cedar and paper through various states of evolving, unraveling, and, ultimately, becoming, this exhibition reveals the tensions between methodology and intuition, monumentality and vulnerability, and meaning and ambiguity in her practice.

Ursula von Rydingsvard: States of Becoming is organized by the Bruce Museum and curated by Margarita Karasoulas, Curator of Art, with Jordan Hillman, Assistant Curator.

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
ALL THE CHILDREN I NEVER HAD, 2018–2024
Cedar and graphite, 60 x 99 x 127 in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery
Photo by Joshua Simpson

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
Untitled Brush, 2000
Cedar and pig intestines, 116 x 39 x 11 in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
Untitled, 2016–2019
Pigment, paper pulp, thread, fabric, and handmade linen paper, 35 x 23 ¼ in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
DO CIAŁA, 2024
Cedar and graphite, 123 x 108 x 15 in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery
Photo by Joshua Simpson

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
Untitled, 2019
Silk scarf, thread, pigment, paper pulp, and handmade linen paper, 29 x 37 in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery

Ursula von Rydingsvard (American, b. Germany, 1942)
Untitled, 2019
Silk scarf, pigment, thread, paper pulp, and handmade linen paper, 38 x 22 in.
© Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy Galerie Lelong and Talley Dunn Gallery