Anders Ruhwald at Volume Gallery @ Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Most artists can relate to the mixed feelings that arise over the course of a longterm or large-scale project. The intensity of focus and consistency of attention required to execute a work over the course of multiple years can be as draining as it is fulfilling. Art, at best, is an experimental process; projects that take on huge dimension can either feel like huge risks or huge burdens.
It makes sense, then, that in the midst of wrapping up the massive undertaking of his Unit 1: 3583 Dubois project, ceramic artist Anders Ruhwald began to move in an entirely different direction. Unit 1, which involved buying and rehabilitating a turn-of-the-century apartment building in Detroit, and reconstructing one of the units — first in part at Volume Gallery in Chicago, and then in its entirety at MOCA Cleveland — then populating it with a number of large ceramic forms, represents the kind of masterwork that can eat an artist’s entire life and practice.