SCHMUCK 2014 – Munich – 12-18 Mars 2014
Maurer Zilioli-Contemporary Arts zu Gast bei reillplast,
« Karen Pontoppidan – Canvas Context Cash«
Inauguration : 12. März, 18 Uhr
Aperitivo: 14. März, 17 Uhr
« In the trilogy CANVAS CONTEXT CASH, presented for the first time in Munich as a cohesive work group, Karen Pontoppidan takes her stand in the non-ending debate on the relation between the free and applied arts, and particularly between painting/drawing on the one hand and the identity of the contemporary goldsmith on the other. Born in Kerteminde/Denmark, she has dealt with this topic time and again under a variety of headings in the course of her complex biographical trajectory and has in fact devoted her energies essentially to this problem to have her work resonate with it in a series of steps. Against the backdrop of her previous works her recent objects can be seen as a matured conclusion creating interstices of humour and irony and presenting a jewellery that renders the viewer thoughtful and yet never ceases to “clothe” the wearer.
CANVAS consists of geometrical bodies of wood wrapped in canvas and beset with jewellery quotes
like embossed ornaments, appliquéd medaillons or floral décor. Art and craft unite in a cheerful conspiracy.
CONTEXT fathoms out further possibilities of this terrain and reaches out for bolder forms –
in the way of a response to a rising trend that intends to eliminate all individual traits involved in the artistic process or as intrinsic elements of an artistic strategy. Pontoppidan commissions befriended painters to colour the interior of miniature boxes of industrial canvas, leaving the job of binding to other colleagues. The whole set consists of 99 objects and functions as a witty and enigmatic comment on a common practice in contemporary art.
CASH constitutes something like a concluding remark on the economic system associated with aesthetic behaviour. Art reveals itself more and more as a simple definition, dependant on things like context, success and the ambience, in which the individual objects are anchored.
Thus we find ourselves treading on an elastic ground generating value shifts and hybrid creatures.
Contemporary jewellery has become part of such a trend, involving positions that associate themselves with the general discourse of art and respond to it by means of an aesthetic language that is immanent to its material. Karen Pontoppidan’s work is one such voice. A jewellery artist with an absolutely avantgarde breeding, she worked from 2000 till 2006 as an assistant to Otto Künzli and since 2006 as a professor at the Konstfack in Stockholm. Although she mercilessly eradicates all traditionalistic temptations besetting jewellery art, although her work displays a strong proclivity towards things like absurdity, defamiliarization and play, she values her background in jewellery and the goldsmith’s craft, even though this is not always immediately visible.
Were that not the case, her “nasty” approach could never be quite so effective.
For the process involved in her work jewellery is subjected to a mysterious transformation, with
conceptual action and critical reflection on the one hand and aesthetic and ornamental recapitulation
on the other melting into a compact and handy form. »
Karen Pontoppidan Context2
Karen Pontoppidan Canvas49
Maurer Zilioli – Contemporary Arts
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