Based on the work Container, the exhibition with the same name embodies a rich dialogue between Päivi Ernkvist and Pontus Lindvall. In the gallery, we can follow how a dynamic and multifaceted unfolds in various directions. There are poetic creations, curious studies of ceramic techniques, and material investigations that challenge us to reconsider the conventional. We encounter a craft that shapes and analyzes everyday life, from the small and familiar—what we often recognize as craft—to experimental and conceptual explorations alongside depictions of our shared public space.

 

Container

Container is a dialogic work that can be described as a container of various crafts. In Pontus Lindvall’s intricate display installation, we encounter works from Päivi Ernkvist’s long career as a ceramist. Following the installation, we find different constellations, a kind of tableauxs of dramaturgical material encounters and handmade lamps that highlight and make visible Ernkvist’s many different objects. It is a sequence of material dialogues. Here, we meet works from her debut exhibition at the gallery Hos Petra in 1973, as well as later works such as her various publications with graphic designer Lisa Olausson.

Kastlösa Electric – A Hospitality Industry?

This work has grown out of Container but moves in a different direction, towards a different place. The starting point for the work’s meandering reflections is Kastlösa, the village on Öland where Pontus Lindvall lives. Here, he creates a series of overlapping situations that analyze and test material cultures. With the lamp as a recurring component, he experiments with forms drawn from imagination of “design classics”—something that here is being dissolved into an investigative, handmade composition.

Kastlösa Electric – A Hospitality Industry? is a workshop for investigating our time and the (im)possibilities of craft. It deals with value, communication, and the conditions for forming an existence—or as Pontus Lindvall puts it: “a mess of current diary notes concerning everything from temporary nature of our physical existence to small and large questions about the inherent contradictions of humankind.” There are many questions without any given answers.

Magiska Lådan

Simply described, Magical Box is a fold-out exhibition wagon crafted by MADAM snickeri & möbelrestaurering, which has carefully shaped it from waste pieces. It is a mobile mini-exhibition that can be moved to different locations. It can constitute its own exhibition, or as here at Kalmar konstmuseum, be part of a larger conversation. Magiska Lådan (Magical Box) is simultaneously Päivi Ernkvist’s work, part of her practice where she invites other practitioners to participate, and a proposal, a method that can be shaped in many different ways. In Magical Box and on the shelf in the exhibition room are her later works, objects from the poetry of everyday where the sensitive modeling of the hand comes to the forefront.

Mille e una Notte

In the work Mille e una Notte, Päivi Ernkvist wants to demonstrate the possibilities of classic ceramic methods. Each tile is handmade, rolled out of red earthenware, and painted with cobalt-colored engobes in multiple layers giving each tile its unique living surface. The red line between the tiles is there to provide contrast, accentuating the blue color. The work was exhibited at Konsthantverkarna in 1991, which subsequently