Frequent prizewinner with innumerable artworks in public spheres, Alejandra Ruddoff always discovers new worlds that induce her to experiment with new shapes and materials, such as her exhibition at the National Museum of the Fine Arts of Santiago de Chile where she showed nine iron sculptures in search of divesting sculpture from mass and weight.

According to Milan Ivelic, director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Alejandra Ruddoff‘s exhibition was the culmination of an aesthetic orientation towards volume dematerialization, initiated  in 1988 when she made the first exploratory move to divest sculpture from mass and weight in order to expand it spaceward. That year she worked in Munich with spatial structures, she virtually unfettered from gravity, relinquishing such enfolding masses as sculptures in the round, and advanced towards a spatial conquest where space is the lead character. She enforced this experience -reiterated in 1992 during her second stay in Munich- by her direct observation at the automobile industry of the significant role of energy, movement, and velocity.

Up to a certain point prompted by the Chilean political process of those years, Alejandra Ruddoff sought new horizons and knowledge that would be more in line with her expectations. In 1987, she applied for and won a scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts of Munich, Germany, and renewed it between 1991 and 1993. This implied a relevant step for her development, as well as the experience she acquired when meeting other sculptors, executing sculptures in situ and comparing her art practice with her peers at home and abroad. This is a working modality convoked by diverse institutions under the common title ‘Symposium’ that offers artists an opportunity to leave his or her studio and meet other sculptors, and to talk about each other’s theoretical and practical view of sculpture.

Alejandra Ruddoff (AR): I felt as happy as a clam. To find the spot I had looked for so long was fundamental for my creative process. I should say that fundamentally all the basics had been solved: a teacher, working space, tools at my avail, specialized assistance, models as required, being part of each interesting workshops, etc.