Sally von Rosen - On Three Legs: Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko has the pleasure of presenting Sally von Rosen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, On Three Legs, opening on Thursday 26 February between 17:00 – 20:00 in the presence of the artist.

Von Rosen’s sculpture and performance-based practice is rapidly gaining international attention. In recent years, her work has been exhibited at institutions such as Bonniers Konsthall (SE), Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (DE), Kunsthal Aarhus (DK) and Schinkel Pavillon (DE) to name a few, and Elephant Magazine named her one of the artists to watch in 2025. Upcoming institutional exhibitions include Gothenburg Art Museum (2026) and her first institutional solo exhibition at Kunstverein Göttingen (2027). In early summer, a large-scale outdoor sculpture will be unveiled for a temporary presentation in central Stockholm.

Intuition and theory converge in von Rosen’s practice. Her sculptures are caught in a state of fluid-like transformation, arched and turned, often found balancing on needle-sharp claws. Whilst the works in themselves can come forth as both uncanny and haunting, there is a tenderness embodied within them, begging the viewer for an interpretation. With reference to Jane Bennet’s Vibrant Matter (2010), von Rosen’s practice highlights the importance of treating objects as vibrant entities, engaging audiences in narratives that transcend traditional boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, sparking reflections on our shared existence and environment.

Starting out from the unconditional interaction with tactile matter, the shapes evolve organically as the material merges with her own mental library of stories, memories, and references. Some touch on the history of von Rosen’s family, where military and artistic histories are intertwined. Others create modern fables for rituals in a surreal world marked by infertility, reflecting contemporary anxieties around reproduction. Dismantled symbols of authority are also present in the exhibition, commenting on how power is represented and misinterpreted throughout history. With their open and fluid shapes, von Rosen’s sculptures invite the viewer’s own associations and projection onto the works, opening up for a place of contemplation.

Sally von Rosen (b. 1994, Gothenburg, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Von Rosen received her MFA in 2019 from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts and she has studied Performative Studies at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna. She also holds a BA in Philosophy and Aesthetics from Gothenburg University.

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On Three Legs

They lean, pull in different directions, exist on the verge of collapse. Forms materialize, dissolve, and join together again. The experience is at times tangible, at times diffuse. It is not unfamiliar. It is recognized as a memory without a narrative.

Sally von Rosen’s works reach the body before thought. They activate sensations that do not always allow themselves to be translated into language. The bronze sculptures are consistently headless. No gaze is returned, no hierarchy organizes the form. The bodies are not guided from above but orient themselves through weight, force, and bearing capacity. They appear concentrated on function.

To be without a head has throughout history carried strong symbolism. In mythology and folklore, the headless body recurs as a figure of transgression: from the medieval “Blemmya”, the being whose face sits in its chest, to the decapitated martyr whose body continues to walk. The headless figure is both frightening and strangely free from identity. Without a face, the point where identity is conveyed is absent. This implies a displacement from the rational self to the bodily, from conscious control to drive and instinct. The body knows before language. It reacts before it understands.

The loss of center can also be understood in relation to the unconscious and the world of dreams: perspective slips, identities shift, the body is present without being fixed to a self. Sigmund Freud described how the unconscious operates without a face, without a coherent narrative. Carl Gustav Jung spoke of archetypes that appear in dreams without being fixed to an individual self. In Sally von Rosen’s sculptures, the body is not a representation of a person, but rather exposes a condition. The body is not someone, but something that acts. The rational subject loses its dominance. Instinct emerges, and movement becomes primary.

The experience of Sally von Rosen’s works does not remain at the level of sight. The forms are virtually felt in the mouth, like a tongue swollen from dream and not yet able to speak. Something attempts to articulate itself but language is insufficient. A quiet friction arises. The grotesque and the sensual shift almost imperceptibly. The skewed and disproportionate carry a particular charge. In distortion there is an intensity that the perfected often lacks. The imperfect touches something deep within us, an experience of the body as never entirely stable or coherent. Attraction and resistance coexist. In this duality another kind of beauty articulates, one that pulses in what resists.

Perhaps it is precisely there, in what cannot be said, that the titles begin to act. When the figures linger in the body as sensation rather than thought the words appears, not as explanations, but as whispers and cracks. As if language itself were trying to touch something already felt, but not yet given clear form. In this gap between body and word, a new orientation arises.

In this subtle shift, the work Coccyx takes shape. The title points toward something concealed yet decisive. The tailbone is an evolutionary remnant, a fragment that no longer fulfills its original purpose but still supports the body and keeps it upright. Within the word resides a paradox: the superfluous that is simultaneously necessary. Here, an image of the body as historical matter is activated, as a bearer of previous forms and displaced mechanisms. The marginal reveals itself to be decisive. Strength and vulnerability converge.

The center of gravity has shifted. Balance is not lost, it is transformed. Balance is not only about standing, but about continuing when equilibrium is disturbed. In Rebirth Machine another vulnerability presents itself. Already in the title, two worlds meet: rebirth and machine. The organic and the mechanical. The unpredictable and the controlled. The tension between these concepts opens questions of control and loss in a time that promises technological precision without regard for the existential feelings of unpredictability.

This inner instability is exposed with a title. Statue carries a heavy art historical charge. The equestrian statue is one of the most established monumental expressions of power as an image of control, hierarchy and heroism. But by only uttering the tradition, without affirming its stability, a discrepancy manifests. The expectation of authority is evoked and undermined at the same time. The classical meets the instinctive. The monument is returned to the body and the imagery of power is redefined.

The elevated gesture loses its self-evident weight and the gaze is brought to the most fundamental. The sculpture Posture (two legs) as a stance rather than a physical structure. Not as identity, but as a way of standing. Where the equestrian statue traditionally raises the body above the ground this title returns us to two legs, to the most exposed form of human balance. If power seeks height, posture seeks equilibrium. Balance is never given. It must be adjusted and found again.

The exhibition title On Three Legs is itself an act of balance. It suggests contingency but also movement. Three legs may be perceived as a deviation, that something is damaged or disturbs symmetry. Three legs are perceived as one too many or one too few. At the same time, three legs are often sufficient. In animal movement, one leg is always in the air; stability does not arise in stillness but in repositioning. Here there is neither perfection nor defect, but an ongoing attempt.

When the sculptures interact in space, a state can be perceived. They do not reveal themselves, but set us in motion toward them. They become places where body and psyche cannot be separated, where seeing is not an isolated optical act but a somatic experience. In a time marked by acceleration, technological presence and constant overexposure, perception itself becomes a site of negotiation. The present is not only something we live in, but something we carry through our bodies. In contrast to their weight and materiality, Sally von Rosen’s sculptures refuse to offer fixed positions. They lean, hesitate, carry their own lability.

In this ambivalence, On Three Legs serves as a reminder that orientation does not always occur through clarity, but through testing. The works allow us to remain in uncertainty, embrace it, and continue forward nonetheless.

Tessa Praun