The exhibition Migrationsbrings together three artists, the photographer Nicolai Howalt, the visual artistEsben Klemann and the sculptor Pipaluk Lake-who exploit, each in their own way, the migration of matters. The series Silver Migrationby Nicolai Howalt is a pioneer work: he creates images without takes by developing avintage photo paperwith a photosensitive emulsion, which silver ions have migrated because of oxidation. The result is spectacular. In Esben Klemann’s sculptures, it’s the heat and the invisible alchemy operating in the kilnthat transform ultrathin stonewaregrids. A similar process can be seen in Pipaluk Lake’s work -hersculptures can be described as movements of matters (glass and metals) contradicted and stopped.

Migrationsthus shows how a world invisible to the eye, regulated by its own rules, causes movements, whether spontaneous or born from the impact of voluntary interventions… Through the scope of the artworks, the very concrete field of the materials reveals the fundamental processes that are inherent to our existences.

N I C O L A I  H O W A L T (born in 1970, lives and work in Denmark) Through photography, Nicolai Howalt explores time, light, the concepts of life and becoming, materiality and immateriality. His approaches are alternately documentary, experimental and conceptual. His most recent explorations, developed according to a set of rules, have led him to capture the vital and destructive rays of the sun in Light Break(2015).In Endings(2011) he deals withlife turned to dust again through pictures of human ashes. Elements(2016)showcasedthe transformative properties of primary elements of the periodic table (gold, silver, copper and iron)-by media of a photosensitive emulsion the artist transferredthem ontosheets of different metals. The series Silver migrations(2018) is the materialization through images of the process by which expired photo paper(1962) alters. In other words, it describes the chemical evolutions caused by time and humidity. Here shades of soft and glowing greys and strong whites lead us into a world reminiscent of micro-organisms, of shapes on the verge of an inevitable subsequent migration. Only the act of developing the photosensitive sheet photo paper, Nicolai Howalt’s soleintervention, has halted the evolution. Without any shooting, can this body of worksstill be called photography? Or is this a variation on the readymade? Indeed, one could consider that the image lay unrevealed in the sheet and that only the will of the artist made it exist as a work of art.In thecontext ofdigital era, the choiceof the photographer, now merely a revealer of images, constitutes a novel and captivating approach.

b a c k g r o u n dPresented for the first time at the Galerie Maria Lund in 2015 (Here comes the sun) and again in 2017 (de traverswith Esben Klemann), the work of Danish photographer Howalt has been largely exhibited in Scandinavia, Europe and the United States and has received awards by numerous prestigious institutions (Hasselblad Foundation, Danish Arts Foundationetc.). The Maisondu Danemark, Paris,welcomed his exhibition How to hunt(series made with Trine Søndergaard) in 2012. In France his photographs are part of thecollections ofHermès and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.Nicolai Howalt has published severalbooks. The latest, Old Tjikko(2019) is dedicated to the oldest known living organism -a tree in Sweden-and to the instability of the photographic image. It constitutes a fascinating ensemble of texts and 96 variations of the same shot evoking the relations between Mankind, time, nature and the image.

ESBEN KLEMANN(born in 1972, lives and work in Denmark) Playfulness and the desire to escapeboredom (!) are at the center of Esben Klemann’swork. The artist mainly works in the medium of sculpture (in all scales)-concrete, ceramics and porcelain-while maintaining a constant drawing practice. The foundation of his work is the grid, the raster. This fundamental and “neutral” structure-as he claims-can be found in nature but also as a building principle in many fieldsof human activity. During the firing of his ceramics, the very thin grid he has draped, supported or constrainedinto shape will be modified more or less. The artist is seeking surprise, a form shaped bythe escape of matter.In Esben Klemann’s drawings, the grid made of thin lines resemblesa hugeand flexible membrane coveringelements pushing it away, and stretching it as if struggling to escape from it…In other drawings, the linework lures the artist into a game of associations in order to shape imaginary machinery.His draughtsmanship can also be found in his cast concrete sculptures. The artist takes the raw material to a very high point of sophistication and fluidity, where everything seems to ripple, crack open, like a body of masses on the move.

b a c k g r o u n dEsben Klemann has mostly exhibited in his native Denmark, in institutions (Charlottenborg, Bornholms Kunstmuseum, Vejen Kunstmuseum, Danmarks Keramikmuseum), in galleries and the public space. Thus he was invited by the city of Vejen, to install 14 concrete sculptures in the public space (EGNSBETON, 2013). The Galerie Maria Lund exhibited his work in the show Terres-Copenhagen Ceramics Invites(Nouvelle vague –Palais de Tokyo-CPGA, 2013). The following year, Chaotiquement vôtre (with Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen) brought together an ensemble of his sculptures as well as a video, Traits d’un abri (2016) his drawings and reliefs,and in 2017 de travers(with Nicolai Howalt) experimented a new tensioning of the space from the respective media of both artists. Esben Klemann participatedin the Parcours Carougeois(2015) andat the 19th edition of theBiennale internationale de céramique, Châteauroux. His work is featured in numerous notorious collections in Denmark, such as the Danish Arts Foundation. The sculptor has also made several commissioned worksfor the Danish public space and is currently working on the creation of a monumental concrete sculpture for the Swedish state.

P IP A L U K  L A K E(born in 1962, lives andworks in Denmark) Pipaluk Lake has developed a unique universe where glass and metals are brought together according to methods borrowed from sewing, knitting, weaving and copperware techniques. When they go into the kiln, these “bundlesof matter” are softenedby heat; gravity stretches them until the artist stops the movement by removing the work from the kiln… In this way, the shape is obtainedboth by the artist’s preparation, which can give more or less freedom to the materials, dictate them constraints and by invisibleparameters that determine the “journey” in the kiln. Afterwards, Pipaluk Lake reworks the retrieved shape; sometimes turning it overto reverse its movement, cutting it, polishing it. The coloration of the glass comes from the vapors liberated in the kiln, from the metalsto which the glass is attachedorfromthe enamels applied beforehand. The finished works recount the journey of the matters, in an enchanting way that recalls the sub-marine world, the awakening of spring in a world of ice and snow (Meltwater)-or to the mesmerizing structures of stalactites and stalagmites (Passer).

b a c k g r o u n dThe work of Pipaluk Lake (born in 1962) has been largely recognized and rewarded (Hempel Glaspris1999 -Honorable Mention at the 2ndChongju Int. Crafts Competition2001, Korea -Silver Medal for the Kunsthåndværkerprisen af 1879) and it is featured in numerous public collections: V&A, London, Corning Museum of Glass, State of New York-Glasmuseum Alter Hof Herding, Germany-Boston Museum of Fine Arts–Denmark’s DesignmuseumCopenhagen -The Danish Arts FoundationandtheNew Carlsberg Foundation. Pipaluk Lake has exhibited throughout Europe as well as in China, Korea, Canada, the United States (Drops, 2006, Chappell Gallery, NYC) and in Australia. In 2011 theGlasmuseet(Denmark) hosted an exhibition of her recent works (awarded by The Danish Arts Foundation) and in 2012 the public institution Sophienholm(Denmark) presented a retrospective exhibition of the artist –Pipaluk Lake 1987-2012.The Galerie Maria Lund has been collaborating with Pipaluk Lake since 2008. It has hostedthree exhibitions of the artist D’ici et d’ailleurs, 2010 -Configurations, 2012 –Hasards planifiés, 2014) and has, among other things, presented her artworks at theKIAFfair in Seoul (2015 and 2016).

The exhibition “Chaotically Yours” brings together these two worlds that explore the “letting go”.

Esben Klemann and Pernille Pontoppidan are two young Danish sculptors fascinated by the possibilities of matters already overused, banal, and omnipresent in our everyday environment. They have learned to perfectly master concrete, ceramics or stucco in order to better mistreat or surpass them. The accidental has become their trademark, by creating conditions in which matters react in an unexpected manner, merge, overflow, foam, contract or collapse.

ESBEN KLEMANN   sculpture – installation – animated film

Esben Klemann is an insatiable artist. He experiments, constantly. He tries, he models, destroys, reconstructs – then throws himself into the realization of a gigantic project where the exploration in depth of a form, multiplied again and again until the establishing of a system.

What drives Esben Klemann to this creative hyperactivity, is a will that he waves as a manifesto, as an artistic program in itself: escape boredom, flee banality. Thus, the neoclassical stucco friezes that adorn the bourgeois apartments go crazy, break, multiply, overlap. The urban furniture – benches, parapets, pavement slabs – erect, loop, undulate. And the gridded ceramic structures, that the artist meticulously constructs, are transformed in the kiln under the weight of heat, of gravity, or of an absurd object placed there.

The well-behaved matters that adorn everyday life, passing by the “Klemann filter”, seem to want to become alive, start a revolution, before going back to their inertia, congealed once again for eternity, immobile witnesses of the beginning of something. As if, for one moment in time, the frenzies of cartoons could have acted in our world.

The practice of drawing, revealed in the video that the gallery will present during the exhibit, is edifying. In hardly ten minutes, we see the artist sketch out on a computer hundred of shapes at a wild pace. The viewer is plunged into the heart of the creative process and observes on the screen the drawing of a sketch of an architecture, an object… It is the illustration of a sequencing logic, as we saw it with Fischli and Weiss – of an unbridled creativity.

Esben Klemann speaks of a “systematic incertitude”. The artist puts in place a process that never corresponds to the traditional treatment of the material he has chosen: he strives to perfectly master it until sublimating and exceeding its possibilities. He then watches the mistreated matter respond to his system each time differently, and makes of the accidental an artistic language.

Background
Esben Klemann (born in 1972) has studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark, before having a number of exhibitions throughout the country, in institutions, (Charlottenborg, Bornholms Kunstmuseum, Vejen Kunstmuseum, Danmarks Keramikmuseum Copenhagen Ceramics, etc.), galleries and in the public space. In 2013 he was invited by the town of Vejen, to install 14 sculptures in concrete in the public space (projet EGNSBETON). The GALERIE MARIA LUND exhibited him for the first time during Summer 2013 in the context of Terres – Copenhagen Ceramics Invites.

PERNILLE PONTOPPIDAN PEDERSEN   sculpture

Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen has lived isolated from the world for three years, on the small island of Bornholm, off the Danish coast, where the ceramics center of the Royal Danish Academy is. There she learned the discipline and the rigor that the work of the clay demands, the perfect mastery of elements that constitute subtle and refined objects characteristic of Danish design.

Then she made a full turn away from her original training. Alone in her studio with clay, glazes (and her dog), she experimented. She let the works she placed in her kiln burn, collapse, mix. She developed an aesthetic of the ugly, the failure, the missed attempt. The series of works she presented for her diploma was called abundance odieuse: that still life in volume was composed of absurd collages of accidents, aborted projects, radically different aesthetics… A mind-blowing accumulation of broken promises. 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.

The ambition of the very young artist isn’t exactly modest: To revolution the world of ceramics!  Slowly, at her rhythm, but with great assurance. She starts by undermining its bases, by disregarding her training to excellence, by integrating to her works  the failed experiences of the best ceramics artists of the country, collected for the series Ingratitude glorifiée, by killing the jar, the pot, bowl and all the craft objects, to which ceramics limited itself for a long time. And she already starts to reconstruct: shaky and almighty structures, tiered tempetto-pieces, sandcastles, heaps of found objects caught in a heavy flow of clay, foamy glazes that overflow like washing up fluid. As a skillful magician, she knows how to use the trick of the variation of the repetition, as a way to maker the object of her research more clearly visible.

Pernille Potoppidan Pedersen is twenty-six, and has already surpassed – maybe without even noticing – the never-ending debates regarding the definition of ceramics, its classification, its destination. Her work is rich, strong and powerful. If you think you have identified her system, her style, be assured, she is already elsewhere….

Background

Having received her diploma in 2012 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Denmark in the Ceramics department in Bornholm (Denmark), Pernille Pontoppidan (born in 1987 in Denmark, where she lives and works) has exhibited her work since 2012. Her collaboration with Copenhagen Ceramics has allowed her to show her work in Paris, at the GALERIE MARIA LUND, in the collective exhibition Terres-Copenhagen Ceramics Invites (2013) in collaboration with the Palais de Tokyo, and to the exhibition space of the collective, in Frederiksberg in Denmark.