Karen Pontoppidan: Canvas

Artist list

Karen Pontoppidan

Karen Pontoppidan puts her heart and soul into her jewellery. This is true art, suitable for daily use. The medium has charmed Pontoppidanin into taking an age-old professional tradition and using it to search for contemporary idioms. Jewellery is an exceptional form of art because the owner can carry the piece on their person all day unlike, for instance, paintings. Nevertheless paintings continue to be the paramount form of art – walk into any museum and see for yourself.

Pontoppidan has engaged in battle with these codes: whereas once she drew the most superb portraits and animals on silver, now she has resolved to paint on canvas. The medium of the grand gesture, reduced on an intimate scale. On the canvas appear vestiges of stories, fragmented recollections. She does not only express these using paint, but also by adding elements of materials rich in associations like tin, lead and precious metal. As Pontoppidan phrases it, are we involved now with ’the art of making craft or the craft of making art’? There is of course no unequivocal answer, only the quality counts and that is guaranteed in her case.

Ward Schrijver
(© Galerie Rob Koudijs)