Choreography - Katja Pettersson

12/10 - 9/11 Preview 12/10 Noon - 4 pm

Katja Pettersson positions us at the centre of the conversation. Her practice is driven by an urge to understand and open our thoughts to the knowledge that aims to seek paths for our common future. Petterssons expression is futuristic based on her vast experience in handling and forging materials. Whether it´s, glass, wood, metal, porcelain, fabric, asphalt or different machines she somehow always comes back to works that we can have a bodily experience with. Either from the scale of the object or from the materials presence in a given room, we are moving as a reaction to the artworks presented in the exhibition space.

The title of Petterssons largest project to date Welcome Back, 2017 gives a prospect to how past, present and future resonates in Petterssons practice. One has to be open and sensitive to details, to notice physical phenomena and movements created by the visitor or by outside forces. The small and sometimes quiet shifts in her work tends to be the ones that truly create change and new ideas. Our presence and actions in the world and/or our lived spaces, can as Pettersson suggests be seen as a choreography, exploring who is directing our steps and how others agendas drives our own.

In Un Vase, 2019 we see a single product handled by many different hands - the video presented in the exhibition registers the path of the object. On an otherwise empty table top a cast rubber hand slowly pushes a porcelain vase across the surface. And ever so often the hand pushes the vase over the edge of the surface, a cycle repeated endlessly over the duration of the exhibition. What are the actions that creates this cycle? Is this an object we depend on and need for our daily life? Yes and No the object in Un Vase, 2019 is defunct, it depicts a vessel but it cannot be used, the top is closed in the end where it implies that a single flower could rest. The bottom is hollow and can’t hold any content, unless turned upside-down as Petterssons does so often turning our viewing and perception of her artworks on its head.

In the sculptural installation Nature Culture, 2019 presented for the first time, and the first work the visitor to Choreography meet. A large tree branch hanging from the ceiling of the room, slowly moving around the space. Nature tamed and at the same time celebrated. Pettersson directing nature as much as us viewers, exploring questions of who is controlling our movements and choices in our common space. Is the state of the world the earth's destiny?

Ola Gustafsson
Stockholm October 2019