The Jorn Museum in Albissola Marina is showing, for the first time in Italy, the works of Anders Herwald Ruhwald

It opened on July 18 and continues until September 30, 2018, at the Casa Museo Jorn in Albissola Marina (Savona), the exhibition The body, the mind, the constructed world, a solo show by Anders Herwald Ruhwald (Denmark, 1974), which comes to Italy for the first time. The exhibition, curated by Luca Bochicchio, presents to the public a number of works made especially for the Jorn Museum: fifteen sculptures, installed in and around the museum’s buildings and gardens, which are the result of a year of research into Asger Jorn ’s (Vejrum, 1914 - Aarhus, 1973) writings and theories on architecture and design.

Ruhwald’s sculptures stand almost as annotations on the place where they are displayed and recontextualize Asger Jorn’s ideas: in particular, the artist reflects on the critique of functionalism and capitalism, as well as on the use of décollage as an artistic strategy. Ruhwald’s works thus occupy specific places in the museum, not seeking to inhabit it, but interacting with a house that was once a living work of art and is now a museum. For example, the sculptures La Dolce Vita I and II are amorphous clods of ceramics that protrude from clamps attached to the kitchen cabinets, and that integrate the furniture into the artwork, thereby reconfiguring the utilitarian value of the furniture itself. It is not a fixed relationship, however, but one that can potentially be modified by opening the clamp and placing the object elsewhere. Thus, the sculptures become a temporary animation of an otherwise fixed interior, disrupting the hierarchy of objects in the room. An ever-changing sculpture that absorbs whatever object it is attached to. In contrast, four ceramic heads titled The four sailors (“the four sailors”) are placed in the garden: each sculpture highlights an anatomical element (an ear, an eye, a mouth, a nose) but does not report any other facial features. These are traditional busts that emphasize a human sensory ability, rather than yielding to classical portraiture thus becoming a representation of fractured human perceptual capacity and a critical allusion to Jorn’s theories of man in culture and nature.

The body, the mind, the constructed world seeks to interrogate Jorn’s architectural critique and vision, posing the question of how a place conceived and understood as a form of radical, ever-evolving architecture can progress after the passing of its creator.

The exhibition can be visited during the Jorn Museum’s opening hours: Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon, Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m. (until 7 p.m. in September). Admission is free, opportunity to make a free offering to the museum for its upkeep. The exhibition is produced by Officine Saffi with the support of OJD Foundation and Danish Arts Foundation, under the patronage of the City of Albissola Marina and with the contribution of the Friends of Casa Jorn Association. It is also accompanied by a 132-page catalog with texts by Glenn Adamson, Luca Bochicchio and Ruth Baumeister.

The Jorn Museum in Albissola Marina is showing, for the first time in Italy, the works of Anders Herwald Ruhwald

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