December 2023, Part 1
There are so many reasons to purchase art jewelry…
- Celebrate that hard-earned promotion
- Honor a once-in-a-lifetime occasion
- Pay tribute to a major accomplishment
- Commemorate the beginning of a new relationship or the end of one
- Pounce on the perfect piece to round out an aspect of your collection
- Or invest in a treat for yourself—just because
Art Jewelry Forum’s international gallery supporters celebrate and exhibit art jewelry. Our monthly On Offer series allows this extensive network of international galleries to showcase extraordinary pieces personally selected to tempt and inspire you. Take a look. You’re bound to find a fantastic piece you simply can’t live without! (Please contact the gallery directly for inquiries.)
Gallery: Four Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Alexander Blank
Retail price: €925
Alexander Blank’s works are difficult to describe. They are funny, beautiful, scary, and often have a sting of irony. As a spectator you feel uncertain, or maybe challenged. Or maybe both since the two often follow each other. Well, you’ll just have to go for the ride—wherever it takes you.
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Daniel Kruger
Retail price: €2,860
This beautiful artwork by Daniel Kruger, made to commemorate Reverso’s 25th anniversary, features dual-sided discs, with one side adorned in vibrant red—a tribute to Vandana Shiva, the Indian physicist and social activist, and the big red spot she has on her forehead—and the other side showcasing an assortment of bright colors. When worn, the discs undergo a captivating metamorphosis, transforming into a mesmerizing spectacle.
Gallery: Galerie Door, currently presenting a pop-up in Heusden (Vesting), Netherlands (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Doreen Timmers (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Typhaine Le Monnier
Retail price: €1,100
The highly talented French/Portuguese artist Typhaine Le Monnier once again makes her presence felt with a beautiful collection called Playtime. Art jewelry by Le Monnier is bright in form, seemingly simple, and always original. The Spring Necklace is a completely unique interpretation of the insect-clad necklace in Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Pagan” collection (1938). Le Monnier set various gemstones in the simplest way possible—by means of a wire through the center of the stone—against the metal flat backing. It’s quirky, with aesthetics as equally imaginative as the designs of her celebrated surrealist example.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Heejoo Kim
Retail price: CAN$4,200
Heejoo Kim finds in the technique of electroforming an echo to her artistic sensitivity—a way to convey the energy and beauty of life and nature. Through this process of successive thin layers of copper on a previously chosen or created form, immersed in a vat filled with blue water, everything comes to life, built with patience and care. Under the creator’s attentive and sincere eye, the elements that will make up her work take form. For this collection, enamel is replaced by Ottchil, a traditional Korean natural lacquer. Kim applies numerous layers of black lacquer to each element, composing her future creations. By combining both electroforming and Ottchil techniques, she succeeds in offering a deep, magical beauty, like a plunge into a dreamlike universe.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, Illinois, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click team name for email)
Artist: Emilie Pritchard
Retail price: US$845
In her signature architectural style, Emilie Pritchard has created a statement necklace like no other. With intriguing asymmetry, this oxidized sterling silver necklace is large in size, but remains incredibly lightweight.
Gallery: Platina Stockholm AB, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Lisa Walker
Retail price: US$3,500
Lisa Walker saw a photograph by Peter Fischli and David Weiss of stacked shoes slotted inside one another, sitting on the floor like a sculpture. This bracelet is her version: shoes turned into a bracelet. The shoes aren’t Fischli and Weiss’s, but normal high-heel shoes. Walker makes reactionary work, consciously active, with influences from all walks of culture and life. The pieces are often laced with references to contemporary jewelry of the last 40 years, questioning and researching what jewelry means, what it can be. Over the years, she has gathered awards and frequently participated in solo exhibitions, as well as group exhibitions.
Gallery: Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Marília Maria Mira
Retail price: €800, plus shipping
“Similarity doesn’t make equal as much as difference makes different.” —Michel Montaigne (The Essays, Book III). Marília Maria Mira is an artist who is difficult to fit into a group, style, or current. It could be said that her work is made with her whole body and all the skills she has at the time she materializes it. Her head is like a firework and her soul like a conductor line of stimuli and impulses. Her presence in the field of jewelry is also not a linear path, but one that has been discovered and experimented with until it has reached the maturity that is revealed today. This solo exhibition is a milestone in a long phase of work that shows her vast interest in various things, phenomena, and situations that touch any of us humans. This exhibition is not a retrospective, but a link between her past and present, covering a period of approximately 20 years.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, Maryland, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click name for email)
Artist: Motoko Furuhashi
Retail price: US$800
Motoko Furuhashi is an assistant professor at New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This piece was recently on view at the Baltimore Jewelry Center as part of the exhibition Location Services, a three-person show featuring works by Furuhashi, Kerianne Quick, and Demitra Thomloudis. Furuhashi’s work in Location Services focuses on direct experiences to capture the physical and non-physical memories of selected locations. By collecting material directly from the site and creating through performative actions, Furuhashi claims the site as an extension of her studio. Furuhashi’s collection of surfaces are applied to jewelry, bringing the site directly to the wearer’s body.
Gallery: Viceversa, Lausanne, Switzerland (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: ilona Schwippel (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Shinji Nakaba
Retail price: 1’800 CHF
“A mysteriously beautiful pearl that looks like a fairy skull. I believe that innovation comes from a spirit of equality and curiosity. The important thing is to exude fresh beauty. This is because new beauty is like a guidepost for human survival.” So says Japanese artist Shinji Nakaba, for whom beauty will save the world. But he doesn’t hesitate to blur the lines between opposites: past and future, life and death, beauty and ugliness. By sculpting pearls, he gives life to those that need our touch to endure. This piece is part of Viceversa’s jubilee exhibition, 5 x 5, which will run until December 23, 2023. Nakaba works and lives in Japan
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Angela Giuliani
Retail price: AUS$1,200
The Yin & Yang bangle by Angela Giuliani is part of Zu design’s Christmas exhibition, called refresh. This oxidized sterling silver bangle is super elegant, with soft curves joining straight square bars to form the structure of the geometric bracelet.
Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design Museum Store, San Francisco, California, (click the museum’s name to link to the website)
Contact: Elizabeth Shypertt (click name for email)
Artist: Owen McInerney
Retail price: US$270
Owen McInerney’s designs are unique. They are influenced by what he sees around him every day. Most of the designs are influenced by nature: above ground, in the skies, and below the seas. Collecting flotsam on a beach or seed pods in the park to turn into unique treasures is a favorite pastime of his.
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