Marie-Louise Kristensen has arrived. The internationally renowned Danish jewelry artist sits concentrated at a workbench in the jewelry and equipment class and works as if she had been at home here for a long time. Kristensen is the first Danish jewelery artist to benefit from the newly created artist-in-residence program, which the Danish Ministry of Culture, assisted by the embassy, has developed together with the Academy of Fine Arts and the head of the jewelery class, Karen Pontoppidan.
A jewelry artist is invited to Munich for a period of six months to implement the project with which he or she applied for this scholarship. The stay is generously financed by the Danish state. That this four to five year cooperation is no small matter, shows that Queen Magarete II will come to the opening ceremony on November 13th in the auditorium of the academy and visit the workshops in the jewelry and equipment class.
Denmark has an impressive tradition and vibrant presence in the field of designer jewelry. This year the Jewelery Box exhibition at the Museum Kunst und Design in Cologne (mak) was evidence of this. From March to August, selected pieces by a total of 59 contemporary Danish jewelry artists were presented there. The Danish state has built up a jewelry collection since 1978: the so-called Jewelery Box, which is permanently on display in the Koldinghus Museum. It should be unique that the Danish Art Foundation lends pieces from the collection to Danish citizens when they have a major public appearance. In this way, the artistic jewelry is actually given the place in society from time to time that it needs to be effective.
But despite this official recognition of the jewelry scene – there is a lack of academic artistic training in Denmark. The primary training is manual. If that is not enough for you, you have to seek foreign scholarships or workshops with other artists. While there are specialized universities in the neighboring Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Finland, there is no such one in Copenhagen and there is no corresponding discourse. Goldsmiths. those who are artistically ambitious are often drawn to London, Amsterdam or Munich. With more than 70 years of tradition, the “class jewelry and device” enjoys an enormous reputation in Denmark. The fact that a Dane has been teaching Karen Pontoppidan in Munich since 2015 paved the way for this unusual initiative.
The Danish jewelry artist Marie-Louise Kristensen has now been working in Munich for six months.
(Photo: Photo: Dorte Krogh)
Marie-Louise Kristensen is beaming. She has arrived in Munich, the city that she has only seen fleetingly in the stress of appointments. Since 2010, her funny, subtle, playful, curiosity-arousing and secrecy-keeping brooch assemblages had already been selected several times for the world-renowned special jewelry show at the craft fair. During jewelry week, like everyone else, she is rushed from gallery to gallery, from event to reception. Now she is happy to have six months to make her own discoveries. Kristensen is a city dweller – she finds her jewelry themes on the street: she is fascinated by graffiti and construction sites. Atmospheres and emotions flow into her pictorial inventions.
Kristensen has arrived at the academy. The workbench – she says, is the anchor in her life, no matter where it is. Arriving in the jewelry and equipment class also means arriving “in the middle of the world of jewelry”. Because this is what is special: 28 students from 13 nations are currently working in Karen Pontoppidan’s jewelry and equipment class. None and no one is a beginner. All of them have a technical, partly also artistic training. All bring their cultural experiences to the discourse on the functions and potentials of jewelry.
Western ideas cannot claim general validity. And that is exactly what interests Kristensen: How can we communicate better with one another across cultural boundaries and what role does jewelry play in this. She is excited to learn other ways of thinking. Kristensen is certain: “We are doing something very special that no other art can do. She very much hopes that with the experiences she has made in the academy and in the city, she will return to her workplace in Copenhagen changed. She hopes then to look at the familiar with a new perspective.
Now she’s cycling around the city and pursuing the irritating experience of not attracting attention as a Dane and yet being a stranger, seeing and hearing linguistic relationships and yet not understanding anything. Everything seems a little twisted and blurry. And this sensation interests her artistically. It will be interesting to see whether and which pictures Kristensen will find for it in her melancholy humorous way. Will she fall back on the motif of curious space capsules that have been patched several times? Or is she rowing herself free in a whole new way? Six months without obligations: this is a gift for the artist. And the students in the jewelry and equipment class now have a multi-layered artist personality in their midst, whose work is definitely worth a close, curious look. With Kristensen’s invitation, the Danish-German artist-in-residence program has got off to a promising start.