Nina Johnson is pleased to announce Sculptures for Plants and People, a presentation of new ceramic sculptures by Danish American artist Anders Herwald Ruhwald.
This exhibition brings together approximately ten sculptures that function as vessels, planters, and seats. Some works will contain live plants that continue to grow throughout the exhibition, while others invite visitors to sit and spend time among the installation. As the exhibition unfolds, the plants will gradually expand around the ceramic forms, creating what the artist describes as “an evolving relationship between the static sculptural elements and the organic material.”
The hand-formed, large-scale sculptures possess a distinctly bodily presence— tall, columnar forms rising from broad bases before opening into crown-like rims and receptacles. In other works, clusters of textured vessels emerge from irregular vertical structures that appear at once geological and anatomical. Their rough, heavily worked surfaces retain the traces of touch and making, emphasizing the haptic and material qualities of clay while suggesting growth, accumulation, and transformation.
Ruhwald includes plants commonly found in the surrounding landscape in the exhibition. This shift in context forms a central aspect of the artist’s investigation. “By relocating plants that are common in the local landscape into the context of the gallery,” the artist notes, “a perceptual shift occurs in which the plant receives a different kind of focus.” Removed from their everyday surroundings and integrated into the sculptures, these familiar species become newly visible and are brought into sharper relief.
The exhibition proposes a slower mode of looking. Sculptural stools placed throughout the gallery encourage visitors to linger with the work and observe its gradual changes over time; by inviting viewers to sit, the stools also level the relationship between observed and observer, effectively making the observer part of the installation and hereby dissolving the hierarchical distance. For the artist, the living plants serve not only as a kinetic element that activates the sculptures but also as “a relational component that establishes a dependency between the work and the viewer,” since the plants require ongoing watering, maintenance, and care. Bringing together ceramic form, living material, and audience participation, Sculptures for Plants and People creates an environment shaped by attention, duration, and exchange. As viewers move through the space—pausing, observing, and caring for what they encounter—they become participants in the work’s continual unfolding.
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People is on view through November 14, 2026, in the Front Gallery.
