My work generally employs a variety of very specific, and often experimental, materials to support the concept of the pieces. Often, these materials include an element of change, such as a drying or melting process, pointing to the impermanence of matter, a state of flux in all being.
All pieces in this series are composed of cast or fabricated versions of a single form: a small apothecary glass flask. I imagine its future representation: one of technological perfection, angulated, smooth and mirrored. I imagine an underlying structure obtained from a 3D scan of its form like an interior scaffolding. I imagine its decay: A casting of its form in gelatin results in a shrunk and hardened form, its surface wrinkled like ancient skin. Recast in reconstituted eggshell, copies of those shrivelled forms appear underneath optical filters, which makes them visible only from a certain angle.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Katja Toporski is a jewellery maker, professor and writer with an MFA from Towson University, living just outside of Washington DC. She also holds a medical degree and had been a practising anesthesiologist prior to her career in jewellery.
Her work is informed by philosophical thinking and juxtaposes archetypal objects and elements to explore the limitations of our knowledge of things in life. It has been shown in numerous exhibitions across the US as well as internationally, both in group and solo exhibitions. She also has worked on curating, most recently the exhibition Site Effects, which was exhibited at the Bayerische Kunstgewerbeverein in Munich and the Baltimore Jewelry Center in 2020.
