About the Artists: Kirsten Plank

Two sides

Venue: The Gallery of Art in Legnica, 1 Katedralny Square
Open: 25.04.- 16.07.2023
Opening: 06.05.2023, 20:00
Opening hours: Tuesday - Sunday: 12:00 - 18:00

Free admission

Kirsten Plank

A collection of words, metamorphoses

everything has two sides....

Ordered structure vs. initiated anxiety

Foreground - background

Order - disorder

Desintegration - construction

Contrast

Character

Variously

Vibrantly

Thinking over

Slowing down

Evident - hidden

Self-sufficient - dependent

Personality

Meeting

Appearances - inner life

Alienation

New structures

Still - lively

Manipulated - authentic

Beyond thoughts

"Two sides" is a solo exhibition by Kirsten Plank, winner of the Art Gallery Award in the International Jewellery Competition "Still Human?" in 2021.

The artist is inspired by the two-dimensionality of space and shapes as well as the duality of perspectives in experiencing the world. She analyses the processes of construction and disintegration that are universal on our planet, creating objects that can be deconstructed, reconstructed, and assembled again from fragments like a jigsaw puzzle. In terms of form, her work oscillates around the transformation of material subjected to goldsmithing, radically changing its quality - like paper cast in metal. Plank's objects are subjected to constant metamorphosis on all levels. They become a kind of game with the viewer. A game in which everything changes: a face becomes a necklace, a bee becomes a form of jewellery. She introduces anxiety into the ordered structures, showing the multifaceted nature and ambiguity of life experiences.

EXHIBTION CATALOG TO DOWNLOAD:

Face 2 necklace-earrings, collage, silver, pigment, rust, textile, acrylic glass, onyx, ca. 140 g, ca. 130 x 210 mm, 2021

Kirsten Plank's jewellery is like a story within a story. The recipient unwraps the individual elements of the object in all their richness of meaning. The designer takes her stand in a discussion on the nature of our age, particularly the relationship with nature and the appropriating attitude towards fauna. Contrasted with the lightness of the insects, the heavy metal forms are intended as a symbolic commentary on the situation of animals caged in anthropocentric oppression.

The two sides in the title are also a creative analysis of contrasts: growth and erosion, construction and deconstruction, the explicit and the implicit, the dead and the living, dependence and independence... The sequence of dichotomies describing Kirsten Plank's expressive works does not end there, for we are with the very centre of the tension between the verse and the reverse of human nature, which, as Blaise Pascal claimed, is 'the glory and the foulness of the universe'.

Shark necklace, silver, varnish, pigment, ca. 230 g, ca. 50 x 250 x 400 mm, 2015

Square yellow necklace-object, brass, pigment, varnish, ca. 390 g, ca. 40 x 200 x 200 mm, 2015

Kristen Plank - born 1974 in Straubing (Germany) German goldsmith artist, graduate of the University of Design in Pforzheim (Germany), member of the Bavarian Association of Artists, the Bavarian Association of Applied Arts (BKV) and from 2010 to 2015 also of the Jewellery Art Concept (JAC). She has participated in many exhibitions, winning numerous awards. Her achievements include: Symbols III Award (2001), participation in the Danner - Stifung exhibition (2002), the Platin Gilde International award (2006), participation in the Debutantes Promotion of the Free State of Bavaria (2008), the Inhorgenta Europe Innovation Award (2010), the FormArt Gedok - Bundesprize (2015), the award of the Art Gallery in Legnica at the International Jewellery Competition "Still Human?" in Legnica (2021), Charon Kransen award in the 2022 PARADOX Budapest Jewellery Week (2022). She has been running a jewellery atelier in Deggendorf since 2014.