Biography
Lives and work on a farm in the woods around Silkeborg, Denmark.
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen started her career as a ceramist by undermining the bases of this discipline. She developed an aesthetic of the ugly, the failure, the missed attempt. In one of her first series of work, she chose to disregard her training to excellence by integrating to her art the failed experiences of the best ceramic artists of the country. She Kills the jar, the pot, bowl and all the craft objects, to which ceramics limited itself for a long time. She undermines her discipline, and starts to reconstruct: shaky and almighty structures, tiered tempettopieces, sandcastles, heaps of found objects caught in a heavy flow of clay, foamy glazes that overflow like washing up fluid.
The works of Pernille Pontoppidan tell a hundred pieces of fascinated stories superimposed in a cadaver exquis of good and very bad taste, of baroque and minimalism, of extreme dexterity and bitter failures.
Exhibitions
rv à l’air libre
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen
16. 10 – 18. 11. 2020
Accumulations of life remnants, still-lives of contemporary existence, architectures or altars meant for libations of consumerist society… As static as they are, Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen’s sculptures are intimately linked to pulsating life. A crowbar, old dentures found in an abandoned factory, a toaster, a piece of electric cable, a small shapeless cushion or even traces of nicotine on the wall; the inspirations are limitless. Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen is fascinated by the nooks of life, including those that exist in silent rejection or that could be described as ugly.
Terres
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen
22. 06 – 14. 09. 2013
Within the context of Nouvelles Vagues – The season of young curators by the PALAIS DE TOKYO in collaboration with the Comité professionnel des galeries d’art. Curator : Margaux Brugvin.
TERRES aims at showing how – at the age of the digital and dematerialization, clay- profoundly linked to the cultural tradition and the concept of handwork – continues to inspire, to reinvent itself, and pushes artists toward new experimentations. TERRES wants to unveil a still unrecognized and yet extremely dynamic side of contemporary art.
Off site
MAMC, Saint-Etienne Métropole
Ravage
Peter Martensen
09. 03 – 27. 08. 2017
Sans cesse en quête d’une vérité artistique et existentielle, Peter Martensen trace, à travers sa peinture, son propre chemin, indépendamment des modes parfois aléatoires du monde de l’art. Nombreux sont les musées danois qui lui ont offert leurs cimaises et depuis, il a été présenté en Suède, en Italie, en Corée comme à New York ou Paris. Ravage est sa première exposition monographique dans un musée français [extrait du communiqué de presse].
Maison du Danemark, Paris
Ravage
Peter Martensen
06. 09 – 29. 10. 2017
Première exposition de l’artiste sur la scène institutionnelle parisienne, Ravage rassemble peintures, dessins, sculpture et vidéos témoignant de la cohérence de la démarche de l’artiste. Loin d’une rétrospective de l’œuvre de Peter Martensen, cette exposition intervient dans une période de création particulièrement riche et innovante dans sa carrière dont elle se veut l’écho [extrait du communiqué de presse].
Publications and texts
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen
“Spine has pine in it”
video, 2017
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen sculpts with a creative audacity where the primitive and the sophisticated combine. See her at Tommerup Ceramic Workshop (Denmark) as she creates a monumental work for the show ‘Grand Designs – Clever Hands’ at Clay Museum, Denmark, 3.10.2017-1.04.2018.