Anders Herwald Ruhwald

Lithium Bliss

Opening June 12 2025

Photo: Malle Madsen

Andersen’s Contemporary is pleased to present Lithium Bliss, the third solo exhibition in the gallery by Danish artist Anders Herwald Ruhwald - an exploration of how the green economy materializes.

In Lithium Bliss, we step into a sensuous, sculptural world where materiality, transformation, and environmental consequence intersect. Five large-scale soft ceramic sculptures glazed in turquoise, blue, rose, and dusty yellow seem to echo the vast lithium extraction sites and mounds. On the gallery walls, a blue colour runs in fine strains from the ceiling to the floor in a viscous flow, allowing the liquid to reveal its physical properties as well as the surface structure of the walls.

With Lithium Bliss, Anders Herwald Ruhwald questions and problematizes the realities of aesthetic materials in the green economy. To this end, Ruhwald has developed a set of lithium-based glazes for the sculptures. Lithium is a key component in battery production, an essential element in the shift to green energy; however, the extraction of this material has substantial environmental impacts. Vast amounts of water are needed at the extraction sites, often covering thousands of hectares of land, displacing local communities and leaving large areas prone to erosion.

By naming the exhibition Lithium Bliss, Ruhwald draws attention to the dualistic character of this material—its promise of a greener future—while also acknowledging its darker implications. The word bliss suggests a sweet, euphoric state, but one that often carries a hidden cost. The artist explores how these changing processes are not only reshaping our environment but also transforming our perception and experience of the world around us.

Ruhwald is known for working with installation and sculpture, often using ceramics as a key element. Ruhwald is drawn to clay for its ubiquity, as well as its dual applications in both design and sculpture. He usually employs both of these histories in his work, while challenging traditional perceptions of the material and its spatial implications.

Anders Herwald Ruhwald (b. 1974) graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005 and has spent the past 20 years living in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Last year, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in New York and has had more than 35 solo exhibitions and 150 group exhibitions at museums and galleries across North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Major solo exhibitions include Indianapolis Museum of Art, MOCA Cleveland, Saarinen House at Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit, and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK and his work is represented in more than 30 international public collections such as The Art Institute of Chicago, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA, Nasjonal Museet, Oslo, Bornholms Kunstmuseum, and LACMA.
This fall, the National Museum in Oslo will restage his monumental installation You in Between (2008), and the Bornholm Art Museum will mount a solo exhibition of recent works from the past 5 years.