Anders Ruhwald

Ruhwald completed his BFA at the Royal Danish Academy in Bornholm, Denmark in 2000.[5] While there, he apprenticed for artist Jun Kaneko, whose work had a lasting influence on his practice.[6] Ruhwald finished his MA at Royal College of Art in London in 2005,[5] studying under Martin Smith, Allison Britton and Emmanuel Cooper.

Central to Ruhwald's work is the idea that "the messy practicality of objects is something to be embraced and not occluded"[7] and his work can be understood as an amalgamation of both art and design without giving regard to the hierarchies normally assigned to these.[8][9][10] Instead, Ruhwald's work implies that "subjectivity arises in the perception of differences, one that is both durational and spatially determined".[7] Ruhwald's work is rooted "the 20th century Scandinavian tradition of the Formgiver in which the artisan compensates for modernity and our enigmatic dissatisfaction with it".[8] His work is often highly crafted and a large part of his practice is dedicated to material experimentation and surface development,[11] and as a result Glenn Adamson has noted that "for all their compressed particularity, [his] sculptures are also enlivened by inexhaustible nuance. Ruhwald takes seriously the idea that surface is where form interfaces with spatial context, so his surfaces have an intensity in all registers".[12]

Solo presentations of Ruhwald's work have been mounted at Indianapolis Museum of Art;[13] Casa Museo Jorn,[14] Italy; MOCA Cleveland;[15] Kunstner Forbundet,[16] Norway; The Saarinen House, Cranbrook Art Museum,[17] Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK.[18] In 2019, he completed the permanent installation Unit 1: 3583 Dubois St[19] in Detroit supported by the Knight Foundation,[20] The Graham Foundation,[21] The [Gilbert Family Foundation and the Danish Art Foundation.

In 2011, Ruhwald won the Gold Prize at the Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennial in South Korea,[22] and he was awarded the Sotheby's Prize at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2007.[23]

His works is the included collections of Victoria & Albert Museum, London;[24] The Art Institute of Chicago, US;[25] Philadelphia Museum of Art, US;[26] Detroit Institute of Art, US;[27] Indianapolis Museum of Art, US; The Denver Art Museum, US; The British Crafts Council;[28] Nasjonal Museet, Oslo, Norway;[29] Musee de Arts Decoratifs, Paris;[6] Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden;[30] Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Norway; Icheon World Ceramic Center, South Korea;[5] Röhsska Museum, Sweden;[5] Musée Magnelli, Vallauris, France;[5] Design Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark;[31] Clay Museum, Denmark;[5] and Design Museum, Helsinki, Finland.

Ruhwald is also a teacher and has taught sculpture and ceramics in North America and Europe. He was an assistant professor at NSCAD in Halifax, Canada in 2005/06, CU Boulder in Colorado in 2007, An Associate Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007/08 and the Artist in Residence and Head of Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 2008 until he resigned in 2017.[32] From 2018 to 2022, he was a visiting professor at The National Academy of Art in Norway.

Monographs

• Ruhwald vs. Stålhane (Jönsson, Love, ed.), Essays by Love Jönsson, Shelley Selim, Martina Margetts and Anders Ruhwald, Rian Design Museum, 2022, ISBN 9789197112796[34]
• The Body, The Mind, This Constructed World (Bochicchio, Luca Ed.), Essays by Luca Bochichio, Glenn Adamson, Ruth Baumeister, Casa Museo Jorn, 2018, ISBN 9781532391736[35]
• The Anatomy of a Home (Wittkopp, G, ed.), Essays by Claudine Ise, Love Jönsson, Asdis Olafsdottir and Anders Ruhwald, Cranbrook Art Museum, USA, 2013, ISBN 9780989186407[36]
• Anders Ruhwald, 2009–10, Lemberg Gallery, Detroit, 2010 ISBN 9788799434008[37]
• You in Between (Beighton, James, ed.), Essays by Louise Mazanti, Ezra Shales and Glenn Adamson, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK, 2008 ISBN 0860830780[38]
• Form and Function, Essay by Edmund de Waal, Exhibition Catalogue for IngerMolin Gallery, Sweden, 2007

Essays

• At Søge, Finde og Huske (To Search, Find and Retain), in Ruhwald vs. Stålhane (Jönsson, Love, ed.) Rian Design Museum, 2022, ISBN 9789197112796[34]
• The Anatomy of a Home in Contemporary Clay and Museum Culture (Brown, Christie; Julian Stair; Clare Twomey, eds.) Routledge, 2016 pp. 73–85 ISBN 978-1472470379

Publications

• Ceramic Art And Civilization, Greenhalgh, Paul, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Great Britain, 2021, ISBN 9781474239707, pp. 9, 468, 469
• Ler er Livet!, (Wirnfeldt, Pia, ed.), Clay Museum of Ceramic Art, ISBN 9788791135545, pp 54, 139
• With Eyes Wide Open: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932, (Blauvelt, Andrew, ed.), Cranbrook Art Museum, 2020 ISBN 9781733382410 pp. 504–05
• Rejsen som Redskab (Elna Svenle, ed.), Vandalorum, Sweden, 2020 ISBN 9789198272345 pp. 34–42 and 116-17
• Objects USA (Adamson, Glenn, ed.), Monacelli Press, New York, 2020 ISBN 9781580935739 pp. 188–89
• Landlord Colors (Blauvelt, Andrew, Judi Duki, Laura Mott and Ian Gabriel Wilson, eds.), Cranbrook Art Museum, p. 250 ISBN 9780989186490
• Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramics in Contemporary Art (Morrill, Rebecca, ed.), Phaidon Press Limited, 2017 ISBN 9780714874609 pp. 258–61
• Contemporary Clay, Ericson, Heather Mae (ed.), WCU Fine Arts Museum, Western Carolina University, pp 14, 54–55, ISBN 9781532326394
• Contemporary Clay and Museum Culture (Brown, Chiristie; Julian Stair; Clare Twomey, eds.) Routledge, 2016 pp. 73–85 ISBN 978-1472470379
• The Making Process, (Cho, Hyeyoung, Ed.) 2015 Cheongju Craft Biennial, pp. 282–289, ISBN 9791195614103
• 2011 Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennial, (Choi, Hong-Chul, ed.), Korea Ceramics Foundation, 2011 pp. 34–35, 204, 210 ISBN 9788989748885
• XXe Biennale Internationale de Céramique Contemporaine de Vallauris (Peltier, Yves, ed.) Somogy Editions, Paris, pp. 170–173 2008 ISBN 9782757201824

• Official website