Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen

The works suggest familiar everyday objects: vases, cake stands, bowls and dishes, but in a slightly distorted perspective. All the traces of hand-crafting have been maintained. In glaze. In my works, I pursue a diverse idiom, where familiar functional or form elements from everyday life are transformed into a more abstract sculptural expression. These traces of familiarity fused with abstract form create an indefinable dual sense of uncertainty and familiarity.

In Nine Suspensions, I explore ceramic sculpture. Working in malleable clay, I create shapes that engage in a dialogue with the viewer’s conceptual framework and sense of recognition. My goal is to explore the way a certain form can appear familiar and evoke parallels to another object that seems somehow related. A relationship between two forms that appear unrelated to anyone besides the individual beholder.

Consciously as well as unconsciously, we search our memory and subconscious for references to something that we already know, have experienced or sensed. When we look at a familiar form, we are able to sense what it feels like, how it feels in one’s hand, the tactility and the material.

I find this framework of concepts and references that each of us develops and relies upon via our memory – underlying as well as conscious layers – fascinating and inspiring, and it is exactly what I aim to explore and examine through my pieces in ‘Nine Suspensions’.  
Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen