Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People
September 10th - November 14th, 2026-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People, Installation View.
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.”
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald, Object for a Plant, 2026. Glazed ceramic, 50.75 x 10.25 x 10.25 in.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People, Installation View.
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.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald, Object for Three Plants (Petitot's Dream #16), 2026. Glazed ceramic, 72 x 23 x 20 in.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People, Installation View.
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.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald, Untitled (For a Plant) #2, 2026. Glazed ceramic, 23 x 31.5 x 19.5 in.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People, Installation View.
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.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald, Object for a Plant, 2026. Glazed ceramic, 50.75 x 10.25 x 10.25 in.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald: Sculptures for Plants and People, Installation View.
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.
Plants have been generously provided by Tropica.
-
Anders Herwald Ruhwald, Untitled (For a Plant) #5, 2026. Glazed ceramic, 7.25 x 18 x 7 in.
Anders Herwald Ruhwald (born 1974 in Denmark) is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice is grounded in ceramics. He lives and works between Detroit and Chicago and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005.
Solo exhibitions include Lithium Bliss, Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark (2025); Plant Works, Moran Moran Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); In the Woods, Volume Gallery, Chicago (2024); Maybe the Sun is Tired too, Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami (2023); Ruhwald vs. Stålhane, Rian Design Museum, Sweden (2022); Century Garden, Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA (2020); The Anatomy of a Home at Saarinen House in Michigan (2012), You in Between at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in the UK (2008) and more than 30 gallery and museum solo-shows as well as over 100 group-exhibitions around the world.
His work is represented in over 25 public collections internationally including The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Musée des Arts décoratifs (France), The Art Institute of Chicago, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Denver Art Museum, The National Museum (Sweden) and The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark). His work has been featured in publications like Vitamin C published by Phaidon as well as the New York Times Magazine, Guardian (UK), Forbes Magazine, The Architects Newspaper, Frieze, Hyperallergic and Avenuel (Rep. of S. Korea). Ruhwald has lectured and taught at universities around Europe and North America and has held an associate professorship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From 2008-2017 he was the Head of the Ceramics Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA.