In light of this unfortunate situation, AJF wanted to do what it can to support our community, even if it’s in a small way. To support AJF member galleries and artists who were planning to exhibit in Munich, and who we were planning to visit during AJF’s trip, we’re producing this special edition of On Offer, the monthly series that allows AJF galleries to showcase a piece that they’ve personally selected to tempt and inspire you. Please contact the gallery and makers directly for inquiries. Enjoy!
GALLERIES
GALERIE BIRO MUNICH
About Galerie Biró Munich’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: Galerie Biró had three exhibitions during MJW 2020. At Galerie Biró they showed works by Petra Zimmermann and Bussi Buhs. Both artists have studied sculpture and work almost exclusively with plastic; they produce and color, cast, and grind their work material themselves. Buhs, who is now over 80 years old, was head of the plastic workshop at the Munich Academy for many years. Her studies of chemistry enabled her to pass on her profound knowledge of the materials to the students. During the years 1980–1990, she made jewelry that can now be seen in juxtaposition with that of Zimmermann, who belongs to a younger generation. Zimmermann lives and works in Vienna, a city with a rich history. Her work often lives from this engagement with the history of this central European metropolis. For the exhibition at MJW she created new, colorful, and highly dynamic works. An exhibition with two very different women from different generations and imprints, who are united by their common love for plastic as a material and an incredible freedom in the language of forms.
Next door to Galerie Biró they showed CHARACTERS, a solo show with Niklas Link, a young German artist with whom the gallery started working five years ago, now with a first solo show. Niklas Link studied in Hildesheim with Georg Dobler; after graduating, in 2015, he moved to Saarbrücken, in western Germany. Link is always working with a self-image. By making dots on his portrait and connecting them with lines, he creates forms that he later cuts out of steel to form three-dimensional hollow bodies. In this way, a multitude of very different brooches have been created. For the exhibition at MJW 2020, Niklas specifically searched for animal shapes in his self-portrait, thus creating brooches and rings that remind us sometimes more, sometimes less, of animals.
In the second room the gallery honored Robert Baines, Kadri Mälk, and Lisa Walker, three artists the gallery has worked with for many years. All of them should have been honored this year during MJW. Baines was selected as Master of Modernism at Schmuck at the IHM (which was canceled); Lisa Walker has a really fantastic exhibition at Villa Stuck. Kadri Mälk was taking part in the exhibition Stone—Final Cut, at Galerie Handwerk. Galerie Biró believes that this outstanding position of its artists should also be emphasized at its own gallery, which is why it organized the exhibition The Highly Honored in their honor. Due to the cancellation of the fair, this is now also the only opportunity to see and purchase new works by Baines. Galerie Biró is particularly glad that it can offer him this opportunity.
Artist: Petra Zimmermann
Gallery: Galerie Biró Munich
Contact: Kinga Zobel
Retail: €4,300
This piece by Petra Zimmermann is just wonderful. The bracelet in amber color is a twist around your arm. It is soft and immediately comes to the temperature of your body. The transparency of the material and the bright color are a real eye-catcher—guaranteed!
Artist: Bussi Buhs
Gallery: Galerie Biró Munich
Contact: Kinga Zobel
Retail: €2,150
Bussi Buhs is an early pioneer in plastic jewelry. Her works are in the major collections. Jewelry by Buhs is a real rarity—it’s a very special occasion to have the opportunity to purchase any pieces.
Artist: Niklas Link
Gallery: Galerie Biró Munich
Contact: Kinga Zobel
Retail: €1,000
Niklas Link is young, Galerie Biró believes that he is an upcoming strong talent. We want to support him and give him confidence for further development. By purchasing an early piece by him, you can follow his career.
Artist: Robert Baines
Gallery: Galerie Biró Munich
Contact: Kinga Zobel
Retail: €4,900
Robert Baines is a leading artist in the contemporary jewelry field; his pieces are in all the major collections. This is a very new piece, and after the cancellation of the fair in Munich, it’s the only opportunity to purchase a new piece by him.
Artist: Lisa Walker
Gallery: Galerie Biró Munich
Contact: Kinga Zobel
Retail: €3,400
This object is pure fun. It’s beautiful on the body, it’s a real statement for contemporary jewelry, it’s an absolutely #musthave!
GALERIE DOOR
About Galerie Door’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: Next Door Galerie Door shows contemporary art and art jewelry from (inter)national artists and designers, both young talent and established names. You will discover experimental and conceptual work, art that is at the edge of autonomous visual art and applied art. For the opening of this spring show in Munich, the artists represented by Galerie Door were invited to make an artwork referring to the theme: next door. The “door” leading to interpretations from a rite of passage, a transition, a hole, to an opening, borders, etc. We all invite you to come in and open and explore your next door. Participating artists: Klara Brynge, Eva Burton, Tatjana Giorgadse, Elena Gorbunova, Helen Habtay, Hartog & Henneman, Mielle Harvey, Maria Hees, Colombe d’Humieres, Idiots (Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker), Taehee In, Jutta Kallfelz, Typhaine le Monnier, Holly O’Hanlon, Jiun You Ou, Sonia Pibernat, Darja Popolitova, Uwe Poth, Philip Sajet, Elwy Schutten, Danni Schwaag, Coco Sung, Robean Visschers, Valérie Wagner, Qi Wang, Inette van Wijck, and Kun Zhang.
Artist: Typhaine le Monnier
Gallery: Galerie Door
Contact: Doreen Timmers
Retail: €555
Typhaine le Monnier made a group of necklaces, lines, Bauhaus-style, titled: NÓ: Knot A Decorative Complication. These works are apparently simple—trying to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum resources, the maximum effectiveness with the minimum effort, and the maximum presence with the minimum screaming. “These objects do not illustrate concepts, they didn’t begin with an idea, but rather my desire to make and think with my hands. This series of pieces underlines my desire to work with simple elements, and willingness to formalize the instant of explorations and playfulness. Revealing the simplified approach that characterizes my practice, side by side with abstract geometric exercises,” says le Monnier.
Artist: Klara Brynge
Gallery: Galerie Door
Contact: Doreen Timmers
Retail: €1,175
Next Door—The Other Side next is the immediate future, a portal for the body, passing through, the other side is different, close in time, new and unknown, somehow “romantic” endless landscapes, patterns, water surfaces.
Artist: Danni Schwaag
Gallery: Galerie Door
Contact: Doreen Timmers
Retail: €355
“next door bathroom come and wash your hands when i search for mother-of-pearl on the internet, e.g. on ebay, i enter words like mother-of-pearl shell, seashell, or pearl oyster, sometimes the right name like pinctada maxima or gold lip oyster. the ebay search results will then show the mother-of-pearl shell as a decorative object, e.g., for a soap (sometimes also for jewelry). how does the soap behave when i work with it like the mother-of-pearl and reverse the process? i carefully start grinding and shaping the soft material. playing with transience, purity, beauty—i confront a utensil, a hand cleanser, with the decoration object and enhance the €1 soap bar by working out the pearls for hours and after a few hand washes the pearls are washed away. the shell remains and serves as a storage place. it just happens that the soaps fit into the current situation. it’s been going on lately. to protect yourself from the coronavirus, wash your hands! i invite you. come and get your soap and pay what you can!” —Danni Schwaag
Artist: Jutta Kallfelz
Gallery: Galerie Door
Contact: Doreen Timmers
Retail: Each €1,900
Jutta Kallfelz carved two abstract and at the same time very realistic animals, a rabbit and a mole, out of hard woods. “Animals digging holes—getting into the earth—hiding.”
Artist: Robean Visschers
Gallery: Galerie Door
Contact: Doreen Timmers
Retail: €390
Robean Visschers used old Dutch silver coins and turned them into King-Pins. His work cleverly reacts to the act of going to Munich, coming from the Netherlands, being neighbors and therefore the “girl next door.”
GALERIE MARZEE
About Galerie Marzee’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: This year at Schmuck FRAME. Marzee would have consisted of three separate stands next to each other:
- Galerie Marzee
- INTRO
- And a special presentation of Stefano Marchetti
At the left, INTRO, with work from artists who have graduated in the past three years and a special presentation of last year’s graduates. In the middle, Galerie Marzee, with an emphasis on new work from several artists and recent exhibitions. On the right, a booth with an installation by Stefano Marchetti, with himself in attendance opposite this booth working at his bench as a guest of Exempla. When you can, visit Galerie Marzee in the Netherlands or follow Marzee and INTRO via the websites, Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/marzee.modernartjewelry/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/galeriemarzee/). For more information, contact us by phone +31243229670 or mail@marzee.nl
Artist: Stefano Marchetti
Gallery: Galerie Marzee
Contact: Marie-José van den Hout
Artist: Rudolf Kocéa
Gallery: Galerie Marzee
Contact: Marie-José van den Hout
Retail: €2,900 (+ 21% VAT)
Artist: Iris Bodemer
Gallery: Galerie Marzee
Contact: Marie-José van den Hout
|Retail: €2,900 (+ 21% VAT)
Artist: Vera Siemund
Gallery: Galerie Marzee
Contact: Marie-José van den Hout
Retail: €4,200 (+ 21% VAT)
Artist: Noam Elyashiv
Gallery: Galerie Marzee
Contact: Marie-José van den Hout
Retail: €4,825 (+ 21% VAT)
GALERIE NOEL GUYOMARC’H
About Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: Every year since 1959, the Handwerkskammer für München und Oberbayern has presented the Schmuck exhibition at the Munich International Exhibition (IHM). During this international fair, many activities and exhibitions are organized in Munich for a week. Schmuck at Internationale Handwerksmesse is the nerve center of the event, where artists, collectors, and curators meet around their passion—contemporary jewelry. FRAME, a selection of renowned international galleries dedicated to contemporary jewelry, settled around the most important exhibitions at this fair: Schmuck, Exampla, Talente, and Meister der Moderne. For Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h’s first participation in this prestigious art fair, the gallery planned to display work by Aurélie Guillaume, Brooke Marks-Swanson, Gabrielle Desmarais, Kazumi Nagano, Lore Langendries, Pamela Ritchie, Paul McClure, Silvia Walz, Silvie Altschuler, and Zachery Lechtenberg, as well as Paul Adie, Bruce Metcalf, and Silke Spitzer, three artists represented by the gallery and selected for Schmuck 2020.
Artist: Aurélie Guillaume
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h
Retail: US$2,400
The Masques Amoureux is a very small collection of enameled jewelry that evokes with force and sweetness those first moments when our hearts get carried away. Aurélie Guillaume offers us a look at love without any modesty, and tinged with humor. With a touch of kitsch, Mon Gros Bonbon, a lemon brooch in enamel, brings us a smile and a sparkle in our eyes.
Artist: Paul McClure
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h
Retail: US$2,650
Paul McClure’s jewelry interprets the body at the microscopic level to reflect our humanity in an era of medical advancement. The fields of biology, pathology, and genetics inspire his work and reveal our increasingly digital, biotechnological understanding of life. Formats and concepts from the history of jewelry and ornamentation ground his contemporary reflection on the human body. In wearing McClure’s jewelry, the invisible body becomes visible adornment. In this new body of work, he uses the laser-sintered silver process to show more of the inside of the cell.
Artist: Paul Adie
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h
Retail: €950
The force of the WORD! The strength of the new series by Paul Adie.
Artist: Lore Langendries
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h
Retail: €600
Lore Langendries was selected as a finalist for Art Jewelry Forum’s 2020 Young Artist Award. “The Hide, the Fragment series balances between the unique and the serial with a particular focus on the tactility and physicality of artifacts and the behavior of natural materials in combination with digital laser technology. Geometrical shapes show the essence of hairy animal hides in their most elementary forms. The material is used as an active agent: as subject and as matter. Hide, the Fragment reveals or conceals. By cutting, shaving, and trimming, a focus on unknown details is created. Some fragments evoke associations from which they originate, others elicit new references by shape or pattern. Brooches look like rocks but feel like soft cushions, others remind us of our teddy bears from our childhood or look like African masks. Hiding identity and creating a new one. Worn on the body, these hairy pieces create mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is unattractive wearing a hairy object; on the other hand it is attractive, and stroking becomes an automatic reaction.” —Lore Langendries
Artist: Bruce Metcalf
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h
Retail: US$2,000
In this new group of works from the Conditions of Ornament series, Bruce Metcalf explores different avenues of ornamentation. Assuming with confidence the idea of creating purely decorative works, Metcalf superimposes drawings and metal silhouettes inspired by photographs from Karl Blossfelt or even color images from Eugène Grasset, the French Art Nouveau designer. Through this superposition, this unexpected and subversive arrangement, Metcalf questions the current discourse on the decorative arts.
PLATINA STOCKHOLM
About PLATINA Stockholm’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: 2009 was the first year for FRAME, the area of the international craft fair in Munich where galleries have the opportunity to exhibit the latest they have to offer in jewelry art. At that time there were about 25 jewelry events in the city. More recently, Jewelry in Munich has exploded and this year approximately 120 events were planned. For the first time, the event has been cancelled and instead we need to open for virtual enjoyment. This year PLATINA very much looked forward to showing new works made during 2019–2020 by selected artists, artists who have been working in all kind of materials in creative and contemporary ways, such as iron, wood, enamel, reconstructed stone, amber, and much more.
Artist: Heejoo Kim
Gallery: PLATINA Stockholm
Contact: Sofia Björkman
Retail: US$3,500
Heejoo Kim’s body of work pays homage to nature and continues her investigation of process in relationship to time. Kim builds layers of electroformed metal around wax to form a shell around the conceived form. The form is then coated in layers of color that visually show the passing of time through labor. These forms exist in a state of flux, oscillating between growing into a life form and at the same time reminding us of life’s fragility and ability to be broken. Kim lives and works in Seoul. In 2014, she was one of the finalists of AJF’s Artist Award.
Artist: Jelizaveta Suska
Gallery: PLATINA Stockholm
Contact: Sofia Björkman
Retail: US$380
Jelizaveta Suska is a jewelry artist from Latvia. She has lived in Sweden since graduation from the Academy of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg. Having grown up in the Baltic area, she has a special love/hate relationship to the material amber. The material can be seen as a world in itself, and she tries to find her own paths in it. She says that the pieces she makes are about feelings of nostalgia, a moment in time, and a bigger landscape of imagination. She has been looking for a way of materializing these abstract matters and associations.
Artist: Nils Hint
Gallery: PLATINA Stockholm
Contact: Sofia Björkman
Retail: US$1,800
Nils Hint is perhaps best known for his contemporary way of shaping cutlery. His latest jewelry is made of knives that mend neatly instead of cutting straight. The used knives used for this brooch are, as most of his material, found iron objects that he collects in the studio. They serve both as instruments and materials at the same time. Hint is a blacksmith and artist living and working in Estonia.
Artist: Manon van Kouswijk
Gallery: PLATINA Stockholm
Contact: Sofia Björkman
Retail: US$1,800
Manon Kouswijks’s working methodology is based on exploring the visual and conceptual potentials of archetypal jewelry and translating them through a range of materials and making processes. The beaded necklace has been her trademark through her career. While originating from a conceptual approach to making, at the same time her works embrace the sensual qualities of jewelry objects in the use of color, their weight, sound, rhythm, and material expression. Van Kouswijk is an artist from the Netherlands; since 2010, she has lived and worked in Melbourne, Australia.
Artist: Annika Pettersson
Gallery: PLATINA Stockholm
Contact: Sofia Björkman
Retail: US$1,875
This necklace takes its inspiration from a traditional royal necklace and the process of transformation. Annika Pettersson creatively examines the formal changes that occur in the making process and the notion of copying and pasting from one media to another. As a jewelry artist she is fascinated with value and authenticity—how these concepts are present in intimate objects. The nature of jewelry is in detail, technique, and direct relation to material. Jewelry as a concept encompasses many ideas that are inherent in the history of remix, relating to the uniquely handmade as well as the digitally mass manufactured.
SIENNA PATTI
About Sienna Patti’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: To inaugurate her first exhibition at Frame, Sienna Patti put together a presentation that includes the work of 17 American jewelry artists and metalsmiths. Ranging from established artists to emerging talent, these women represent a selection of the most important, engaged, and thoughtful artists working in the field today. American art jewelry holds its unique position within the field of contemporary jewelry. The US is a huge country with a diverse population, most of whom can trace their ancestry back to countries spread all over the world. Its citizens all have individual stories that stretch across time and place and it is this individuality that unites the country and that flavors the work coming out of the contemporary jewelry field today. For these artists, all materials, subjects, and imagery are fair game, and the work often combines these together in a manner that speaks to the diversity of history and the interwoven nature of experience. Many of these artists moonlight as educators, gallerists, critics, curators, and writers, bringing a multifaceted perspective and distinctive voice to their work. This inspires a collective energy that makes this work an important contribution to the global field of contemporary jewelry. Sienna Patti has chosen a select group of pieces to feature here and looks forward to presenting the group as a whole at a later date. Each artist was also invited to create a series of edition works that will be available online in the coming months.
Artist: Melanie Bilenker
Gallery: Sienna Patti
Contact: Sienna Patti
Retail: US$4,200
That lovely open shirt cuff on the right, the slight tension of the fingers holding the scissors, the simple and graphic tiled room in the background (and shhhh! on the entire back of the piece!) come together to make this a fantastic work of Melanie Bilenker’s. It highlights what Bilenker does best: create and engage us in intimacy. In this piece we are the mirror, both reflecting and watching. It also memorializes a banal and fleeting moment: a quick snip of the bangs and then the day begins. Bilenker states that she considers hair “proof of existence, a souvenir” and uses it to tell us her story, all the while telling stories of home that are universal.
Artist: Myra Mimlitsch-Gray
Gallery: Sienna Patti
Contact: Sienna Patti
Retail: US$14,000
Myra Mimlitsch-Gray is considered one of the best metalsmiths in the world. Her investigations in metal have inspired many other artists to embrace not only the material, but the history and utility of it. By implying or impeding function, Mimlitsch-Gray’s work is at once familiar and foreign. This recent formed and fabricated silver piece is a great example of positing these questions of function minimally. She isn’t taking an already made object and changing it—though her early work was the forefront of this now pervasive practice in craft and design—she is creating a wholly new object but engaging the history of objects before it. This piece, and the others in the series, are sensual and tactile displays of virtuosity and utilitarian notion.
Artist: Lisa Gralnick
Gallery: Sienna Patti
Contact: Sienna Patti
Retail: US$9,000
Precision to the point of fervor is apparent in much of Lisa Gralnick’s work, whether it is adherence to thoroughly fleshing out an idea, as she has done so eloquently in The Gold Standard Series or the mechanical exactitude in this beautiful example of an earlier brooch. Simple in composition but striking in detail, it is as if we are looking at a small watch component, blown up, or an out-of-this-world-spacecraft, shrunk down. Like an early Sol LeWitt wall drawing, each line is dependent on another. Mathematical comparisons and contour maps are hinted at but neither predictable nor totally logical. There seems to be obvious planning in the works: One doesn’t pick up a piece of gold and assemble such a beautiful object out of it without a plan, or do they? The finesse in this piece implies that the artist could make anything effortlessly with a plan or without.
Artist: Lola Brooks
Gallery: Sienna Patti
Contact: Sienna Patti
Retail: US$5,600
It’s never hard to imagine that the moment Lola Brooks completes a piece and steps back, she grins. There is a playfulness, even in her most materially seductive works, that hints at a wicked sense of humor. Her work has balls. And hearts. And sometimes bows. With the skill of a traditional goldsmith, she is able to manipulate the material: primarily stainless steel using tools made of the same. This brooch touches on Brooks’s fascination with tropes of love and romantic clichés. The use of the doll’s eye harkens to the traditional “Lover’s Eye” pieces made in Victorian times, and the requisite puffed-up steel heart serves as a head. Topped off with coral antlers and diamond tears, the piece gaily trips into the absurd just enough—without ever feeling disjointed or ironic. It says that this is the beginning of a new language for Brooks.
Artist: Sharon Church
Gallery: Sienna Patti
Contact: Sienna Patti
Retail: US$12,000
A beautiful example of Sharon Church’s seductive hand-carved forms, this scepter is tender and powerful. That it was made by Church, herself one of the United States’ greatest treasures of contemporary jewelry, is not surprising. It took complete and utter confidence to decide that this object needed to be made, this object whose use is strictly one of beauty. A pure and intense love of making is imbedded deep in all of Church’s works. She reaches into nature and painstakingly reveals its elegance and allure—even when it might mean that the overripe parts will show. That she chose to make a piece traditionally held in the hands by royalty as an emblem of authority is not a surprise. Carved and conceived with a gutsy command of time, skill, and material, this piece belongs in a museum.
GALERIE SPEKTRUM
About Galerie Spektrum’s exhibition concept for Munich 2020: During Schmuck, Galerie Spektrum showed (as guest gallery at Klaus Lea) an overview of the gallery program, this time with a special historical part, which refers to the CHRONOS exhibition (curated by Jürgen Eickhoff) at the Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein. The gallery therefore presents you here with three artworks by Kyoko Fukuchi, Ruudt Peters, and Marianne Schliwinski, and two very important historical works by Georg Dobler and Winfried Krüger.
Artist: Ruudt Peters
Gallery: Galerie Spektrum
Contact: Jürgen Eickhoff
Retail: €4,000
The series Suctus, from Ruudt Peters, refers to the circle of life. Being born you will come into a cradle, and at the end of life will go into a well-prepared coffin. This philosophical aspect accompanies the whole series in various interpretations.
Artist: Marianne Schliwinski
Gallery: Galerie Spektrum
Contact: Jürgen Eickhoff
Retail: €2,400
Marianne Schliwinski has been working with papier-maché since the end of the 80s. She makes containers and jewelry with this material. Often she combines it with other materials, such as silver, glass, prints, and photography. This necklace is a wonderful representative work, and is very nice to wear. You’ll be sure to get attention when you wear it.
Artist: Kyoko Fukuchi
Gallery: Galerie Spektrum
Contact: Jürgen Eickhoff
Retail: €2,450
Kyoko Fukuchi, born in 1948 in Hiroshima, Japan, still lives in Hiroshima. She specializes in work with urushi-lacquer, a wonderful Japanese lacquer. She makes the lacquer herself with natural ingredients. This very complicated procedure, and the perfection of lacquering, make her work unique.
Artist: Georg Dobler
Gallery: Galerie Spektrum
Contact: Jürgen Eickhoff
Retail: €2,650
Georg Dobler was professor for jewelry and metalwork at the University for Applied Science and Art in Hildesheim, Germany, until 2019. In combination with the CHRONOS exhibition, we showed this brooch from 1979. It’s a really rare historic work from the beginning of Dobler’s career—an opportunity for every collector and museum.
Artist: Winfried Krüger
Gallery: Galerie Spektrum
Contact: Jürgen Eickhoff
Retail: €3,600
Winfried Krüger, born in 1944, taught for a long time in Pforzheim. He influenced generations of students. His work is definitely always surprising. Man with Shadow is part of a series of brooches with shadows he made in the second half of the 80s. This work should go to a museum or a private collection.
MAKERS
ARTIST: Catarina Silva
About Catarina Silva’s work for Munich 2020: “The exhibition Beaded brings to light a material charged with history and symbolism enhancing its possibilities and avoiding the banalization and stigmatized conception that took place over the centuries. Choosing the material itself as the title for this group show intends to question the identity, the place, and the potential of contemporary jewelry in its material diversity and technical vocabulary. I have chosen a group of artists whose works I admire, encompassing different countries and continents, through different cultures and aesthetics, presenting to the public the plastic and conceptual potential of beads.”
Links:
https://klimt02.net/events/exhibitions/beaded-institut-francais
https://munichjewelleryweek.com/events/beaded
ARTISTS: Jess Tolbert and Kerianne Quick—Secret Identity Projects
About their work for Munich 2020: “Hop into the van… welcome to Passenger, we will be your tour guides. As a passenger yourself, one who rides, observes, navigates, and waits, you are introduced to the work of 10 U.S./Mexico Borderlands-based artists. With the work in your hands, you are guided through the ideas, feelings, and experiences of the artists themselves, in their own words. Thoughtful, emotional, and humorous accounts are translated through the objects and into the streets of Munich—until your next stop. Experience the full exhibition in our @secret.identity.projects Instagram story highlights titled Passenger.”
Link: https://www.instagram.com/secret.identity.projects/
ARTIST: Kadri Mälk
About Kadri Mälk’s work for Munich 2020: “I was invited to participate in three exhibitions during Munich Jewellery Week: The Final Cut, at Galerie Handwerk, with seven works; The Highly Honored, at Galerie Biro-Jordanow, with nine works; and at the Pinakothek der Moderne Rotunda, with two works. And I had my Hunt book presentation on Saturday with an audience of about 25 people where 27 books were sold or presented. Pinakothek was closed to the public. Everybody was so sad about it. Galerie Handwerk is located very centrally and had a lot of attendees. At Galerie Jordanow, nearby (a 15-minute walk), there wasn’t a big audience, but one of my big necklaces sold. One of the experienced artist said that Schmuck regained its human scale. Still, the gallerists were not so happy. But the whole atmosphere despite everything was friendly among the artists.”
More information: The book about Kadri Mälk’s recent work, Testament, is available from Arnoldsche Art Publishers, as is the fairly recent book, Hunt.
Additional comments: Keine Panik auf Titanic (Peter Skubic).
ARTIST: Marta Costa Reis
About Marta Costa Reis’s work for Munich 2020: “The work focuses on the universal need of connection with the mystery that lies beyond our human lives. Across time and space mankind has created numerous manifestations of this feeling, collectively and intimately. Religions, of course, but also art and ritual, architecture and song, poetry and prayer. These necklaces embody prayers and poetry from different cultures and times, words many times said out loud and in the silence of hearts, from where it all springs. In making them I became part of that spiritual connection. By wearing them you can continue that motion. This work was first presented at Atta Gallery, in Bangkok, in Fall 2019, in the exhibition Spirits and Guardians. At MJW2020 I was to be part of the exhibition #000000. #000000 presents 10 artists in dialogue around the color black. Hints on concealing and protecting, the secretive and the unknown, strength and authority, elegance or sophistication are unveiled throughout the exhibition. Participants: Carlos Silva, Jordi Aparicio, Jorge Manilla, Rodrigo Acosta, and Valentim Quaresma—the group from MJW2019; and Iris Eichenberg, Sofia Bjorkman, Rebekah Frank, Veronika Fabian, and Marta Costa Reis—invitees to MJW2020.
Links:
Rodrigo Acosta: https://m.facebook.com/pages/category/Artist/Rodrigo-Acosta-1122125801155261/
Jordi Aparicio: https://www.jordiaparicio.es/work/
Sofia Björkman: https://www.sofiabjorkman.se
Iris Eichenberg: http://www.iriseichenberg.com
Veronika Fabian: http://www.veronikafabian.com
Rebekah Frank: https://www.rebekahfrank.com
Valentim Quaresma: http://valentimquaresma.com
Marta Costa Reis: http://www.martacostareis.pt/spirits-and-guardians
Carlos Silva: https://m.facebook.com/carlossilvajewelry/?locale2=pt_PT
ARTIST: Melissa Cameron
About Melissa Cameron’s work for Munich 2020: “My work was to be in the exhibition Declaration of Sentiments, named after the Declaration made at the Seneca Falls Congress in 1848 under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Signed by 100 men and women, it advocated equal rights for women and was the first organized women’s rights record in history. My pieces are from the Escalation Series (begun 2013), through which I present my research into weapons, objects that have been a constant companion of humanity. I make them out of domestic objects, as a reminder of how all human-facing technologies evolve, through constant use and refinement.”
Link: https://www.instagram.com/copluslab/
ARTIST: Rebekah Frank
About Rebekah Frank’s work for Munich 2020: Rebekah was in three different shows and tells us about them all. “Two pieces from my recent solo exhibition, just add flesh, were selected to be a part of SCHMUCK2020. You can see the entire collection on my website. If you are interested in purchasing one of the pieces, please contact Stefan at Ornamentum Gallery.”
Link: https://www.rebekahfrank.com/#/2019-justaddflesh/
“Schmuck2020. Chequita Nahar, dean of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Maastricht selected 63 artists from 29 countries out of 802 applications from 61 countries for this year’s Schmuck exhibition. This exhibition, which has been happening in Germany for 50+ years, occasionally travels, and this iteration will be seen in Valencia, Spain, at the Center del Carme Cultura Contemporània during Melting Point. So at least it will be seen somewhere in the world. The catalog is also viewable online.”
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16pNoHKmu4M8p9ZsDeqzls75YiFR3Sk0D/view
“I miss my motorcycle. One day soon, I’ll return to a life of chrome and rubber. Particularly powerful is how the road communicates with your body through the machine. But for now, these necklaces have steel surfaces with a pebbled matte rubber finish with a polished steel chain, suspended from black linen cord. This series was scheduled to show in Munich, Germany, during MJW with a group making work focused on black, in a show called #000000, with Carlos Silva, Jordi Aparicio Manchado, Manilla Jorge, Rodrigo Acosta, Valentim Quaresma, Iris Eichenberg, Marta Costa Reis, Rebekah Frank, Sofia Björkman, and Veronika Fabian.”
Link: https://www.rebekahfrank.com/#/2020-pacific-coast-highway/
ARTIST: Tanel Veenre
About Tanel Veenre’s work for Munich 2020: “New series for Stones—The Final Cut, at Handwerkskammer gallery. It’s a synergy between carved natural and reconstructed stones. I have been working with the limits of nature and culture in the shape of erotic forms and hearts.”
Link: instagram@tanelveenre
ARTIST: Clodagh Molloy
About Clodagh Malloy’s work for Munich 2020: Munich Jewellery Week location no. 68 “Beyond Boundaries” Apianstrae 1, Munich, Germany
Links:
https://www.instagram.com/beyondboundariesexhibition/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/beyondboundariesexhibition/
AJF YOUNG ARTIST AWARD WINNER AND FINALISTS
AJF had intended to present the winner and finalists onstage as well as show their work at PLATINA—alas. So we present them here, much as we did in our press release of February 24, 2020.
MJ TYSON, winner
2017 MFA, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, US
“All material carries a past, and whether we acknowledge this lineage or not, it exists. It may be to our advantage—as a way of orienting ourselves in our world—to consider the cycles of creation and destruction intrinsic to the objects and materials that surround us.
Considering such cycles, I have found that the significance of jewelry lies not only in its relationship to the physical body, but also in its role in our lives. My work centers on the life of jewelry beyond the body, where it is often a physical marker of abstract ideas, such as lineage, legacy, and favor.” —MJ Tyson
JUNMIN BAE, finalist
2017 MFA, Metalwork & Jewelry, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
“A variety of visual data in the microscopic world awakens human senses and inspires imagination. Such images are associated with the eggs of insects, tumors, or cells. Even those whose shapes are rarely supposed, such as viruses, include mysterious elements with delicate structures and movements, repetition and community, and the contrasts of colors in the microscopic world.
I intend to constitute regular patterns, which can be observed in the process of cell division or the eyes of insects among enormous images in the microscopic world, in a visual manner. I will also focus on characteristics such as organic shapes, the coexistence of beauty and grotesqueness that appears in the movements of proliferation and extinction, and the contrast of positive and negative feelings that can be sensed from the modifications of cells or tumors. Thus, I aim to express such shapes through the process of attaching and piercing small dots on the surface of accessories.” —Junmin Bae
RYUNGJAE JUNG, finalist
2016 MFA, Metalwork & Jewelry, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
“My work features a direct relationship between jewelry and the human body through 3D printing and traditional metal crafting techniques, and the subject of movement. Thousands of chains are printed through digital replication in the form of indeterministic bundles. This is to provide the chance of “coincident luck” that represents the perfection of the limitless possibility of choice, transformation, and adjustment; and to emphasize that a wearer shall only determine the form.” —Ryungjae Jung
LORE LANGENDRIES, finalist
2015 PhD in Arts, KU Leuven, University of Hasselt, and MAD-Faculty of Hasselt, Belgium
“The Hide, the Fragment series balances between the unique and the serial with a particular focus on the tactility and physicality of artifacts and the behavior of natural materials in combination with digital laser technology. Geometrical shapes show the essence of hairy animal hides in their most elementary forms. The material is used as an active agent: as subject and as matter. Hide, the Fragment reveals or conceals. By cutting, shaving, and trimming, a focus on unknown details is created. Some fragments evoke associations from which they originate, others elicit new references by shape or pattern. Brooches look like rocks but feel like soft cushions, others remind us of our teddy bears from our childhood or look like African masks. Hiding identity and creating a new one. Worn on the body, these hairy pieces create mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is unattractive wearing a hairy object; on the other hand it is attractive, and stroking becomes an automatic reaction.” —Lore Langendries
MALLORY WESTON, finalist
2013 MFA, Jewelry + Metalsmithing, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, US
“This body of work is a glorification of mutations, mistakes, and anomalies in both nature and technology. My imagery is dominated by representations of the variegated monstera, a plant with striking asymmetrical patterns of white and green distributed randomly across its characteristic leaves. The beautiful imperfection of these plants has made them highly sought after, a seemingly random millennial status symbol. I’m fascinated and skeptical of the odd objects and rituals that draw my generation’s attention.
The pure white leaves of the variegated monstera cannot photosynthesize, and because of this they perish quickly. Is it the ephemeral nature of these plants that makes them so desirable? I juxtapose these leaves with the markers of our transient technology, cracked screens, and digital mesh. Constructed of anodized titanium, my work echoes the materials used in the sleek devices we depend on every day.” —Mallory Weston
