A Rush of Being: Ida Raselli creates new installation for the 6 ½ Weeks series at Museum Folkwang

From 2 March to 21 April 2024, Museum Folkwang is showing the installation A Rush of Being. Danish artist Ida Raselli explores the cyclical nature of our life on earth. For her artworks, she collects organic materials from nature, which she assembles into new forms.

Ida Raselli (*1986) works with untreated, natural materials in the tradition of Environmental Art and Arte Povera. Her installation A Rush of Being, created especially for Museum Folkwang, consists of found objects from nature - branches, dried flowers, stones, bark and pieces of earth are intuitively arranged on the walls of the exhibition space. The transience of these found objects reveals the cyclical processes in nature and describes it as an ever-reproducing system. The wall surfaces are bathed in light earthy colours, some areas are more colourful than others. The paint is made from clay that Ida Raselli dug up and fired on the coasts and in the forests of Denmark. As a sculptor, she works in dialogue with the element without forcing forms. In A Rush of Being, even the smallest found object can be examined closely. This respectful treatment of the material metaphorically symbolises how man should treat nature. In this respect, Raselli also sees her artistic work as a process of learning. Dealing with the material helps her and the viewer to better understand nature and the cycles it contains.

Raselli also thematises the cyclical in the text Røde Sommer (Red Summer), written in 2022, which is an integral part of the installation and appears in the form of a publication accompanying the exhibition. It is an alternately prose, theoretical and lyrical essay that tells of menstruation, pregnancy and birth, as well as artistic practice and the challenges of our society.

Raselli's work has its origins in the hot summer of 2018, which she remembers as follows: "The drought scared me. I was really scared. It raised all kinds of questions about being human on a drying planet. A reproducing body. It felt futureless in a way. I started working quite intensely on some very large ceramic sculptures in conventional clay..."

Ida Raselli lives and works in Copenhagen.

Information

6 ½ WEEKS
Ida Raselli
A Rush of Being
2 March – 21 April 2024

Admission free

Opening
Fr, 1 March 2024, 6:30 p.m.
6:30 p.m.: Ida Raselli

Welcome and introduction: Anna Brohm
Reading from publication: Ida Raselli
Jazz Trio and bar with the support of Junger Kunstring Folkwang