Katja Prins: Nexus

Artist list

Katja Prins

Drawings seem to be on the verge of coming to life. Lines are fleshed out, arrows light up and codes give clues. Flat slices of abstraction clutch at reality.
Katja Prins’s jewellery has always had a clear three-dimensional structure. Although her style is still recognizable, Prins employs a new idiom in the Nexus collection. The subject motivating the new works is so abstract that they now resemble diagrams and drafts.

Prins is immensely fascinated by the unstoppable drive of science to continue to push its boundaries. In their laboratories, scientists manipulate DNA and the structure of cells and tissue. Almost unobserved, the human species is being corrected, modified and rebuilt. It seems as if Prins has carried out an MRI scan of the scientific vanguard in this new series of jewellery. In thin layers, she prepares the very achievements of science itself for closer inspection

It seems as if Prins has also made a scan of her earlier work with these objects. Diverse themes converge, and the intervening hand of man is ubiquitously both a motivating factor and a driving force. Compassion for living human beings can be found in nearly all the works. It confirms why the artist has chosen jewellery as her medium; Prins places it as commentary close to the body, which is also her subject. Wear Prins’s jewellery as a symbol of the autonomy of the human body and as a celebration of the infinite achievements of science, but also as a warning against unbridled, reckless ambitions.

Ward Schrijver