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MA by Kaori Juzu and Per Suntum

Exhibition  /  08 Sep 2019  -  12 Jan 2020
Published: 18.11.2019
Piece: 108 POINTS OF VIEW by Kaori Juzu.Enamel, glass, copper, 18kt gold, bi-colour metal, silver.. 2019.Photo by: MindGap.From series: 108Earrings or Pins.. Kaori Juzu
Piece: 108 POINTS OF VIEW, 2019
Enamel, glass, copper, 18kt gold, bi-colour metal, silver.
Photo by: MindGap
From series: 108
Earrings or Pins.

© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.

Intro
Per Suntum and Kaori Juzu have since 2002 lived and worked on the island of Bornholm, where individually but in a fruitful collaboration, each has developed their own distinctive expression. Per Suntum in subtle works, wherein form and noble materials he captures a state of soul and expresses deep tales of the interaction between man and the earth on which we live.

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Kaori Juzu, Per Suntum
Kaori Juzu was an apprentice of Per Suntum before she developed her complex jewellery with refined enamel work, almost always composed works that playfully recalls memories of fragments of items that could have been found and stored as special treasures, the concept she also prefers to apply to her jewellery. They are both represented in museums and private collections around the world and are now showing for the first time at the Bornholm Art Museum a major presentation of their work.

Thanks to the support of the Danish Arts Foundation and Brødrene E., S. & A. Larsens Legat, Per Suntum and Kaori Juzu have been selected alongside Danish artists and designers to participate in a 3 months' crafts residency in Japan, 2018. During their stay, the two artists went to meet Japanese craftsmen, to catch the spirit of their know-how and the philosophy that governs their approach of the material and discipline. At the end of this journey, both artists came up with a personal project, aiming to explore the Japanese concept of MA through their works.

But what does MA refer to? This Japanese concept is indeed as popular as obscure and seems to be as difficult to define as to translate.
 Written with a character composed of a sun framed by the two leaves of a door, the word MA can be translated as interval or distance, in both spatial and temporal sense.
However, it was not until the turn of the 20th century, and particularly in Masakazu Nakai's writings from 1929 on, that this rather common term from the Japanese language became a concept in the critical and aesthetic discourse, precisely through intellectual exchanges between East and West. The generic notion of MA - this distance that both separates and connects - is thus regularly convened since the 60s and 70s by multiple artistic disciplines, to approach the concept of space and interval in the light of the specificity of Japan.

But just as the notions of interstice and void have not waited for the emergence of the concept of MA to fuel the Japanese thought and aesthetics, the works of Per Suntum and Kaori Juzu also seem to have somewhat always been guided by this principle.
Through an unsettling mirror game, both artists have at a certain time of their existence chosen to experience the distance between them and foreign culture, by crossing this path between East and West as a way to discover themselves. In their specific case, the MA could thus be interpreted as an initiatory path to gain access to self-knowledge, as an artist, in the confrontation with the irreducible difference of the Other.

/ Text credit to Céline Robin, Galerie LA Joaillerie par Mazlo.

Opening hours: November - January Thursday & Friday 1 - 5pm; Saturday & Sunday 10 am - 5 pm.