Ogromna

The undulating, honeycombed layers of von Rydingsvard’s sculpture consist of roughly hewn cedar blocks chiseled and stacked to create a vessel-shaped form that references the rocky cliffs of a natural landscape, the human body, and architectural structures. The colossal scale of the work and the irregular markings that cover its surface belie the artist’s labor-intensive process. “My love for wood is part of my history,” writes von Rydingsvard. “I come from a long line of Polish peasant farmers, and they were surrounded with wood—wooden homes, wooden fences, domestic implements, wooden tools to farm the land. When you enter any of those houses, you’ll see right outside a huge stack of firewood, usually quite beautifully stacked, with smoothly cut ends.”