Friday, March 13, 2009

Schmuck 2009










This is how I started my wonderful day today, with the stamp from the disco we went to last night plastered to my head because I slept on it just right. Amazing.

What an amazing day. I am stunned, amazed and humbled by the work I have seen today. This work is all so amazingly constructed – with purpose, care and intent. It’s all just so breathtaking to see it all in real life. This has been a very inspiring trip but also important to the questions I ask myself as I grow as a jeweler. I find myself occasionally questioning why it is that work needs to be perfectly rendered because I really enjoy work that has a very sketchy quality to it, but after seeing a showing like this, I totally get it, and I really thought about these questions when I admire some of these pieces. It seems like even though the work has a sketchy/messy quality to it, it is very intentional and it looks like they completely understand how to do it right, but chose to tweek it, to make it look different, to cause us to question, and make it interesting to look at. Seeing how perfectly everything is put together just leaves you there to sit and drool on yourself at the years of meticulous engagement with materials these artists have dedicated to their craft.


Look at these Giovanna Corvaja pieces. He has worked for a long time trying to push metal as far as it can go to be thin, but metal strings in these pieces are so thin they look like fur! Giovanni is a metals a rock star.

Everything is just so perfect! I literally almost lost it when I saw the new Katja Prins work. I considered crying, fainting and crawling into a little ball all at once.

The work is just so powerful, which really makes me think because my work doesn’t really exist on the intimate scale that most of this work is living on, but it still moves me so much. The work presented in both Schmuck and Talente is definitely existing in a professional sphere. The work is priced high, but how amazing is it to see work that you have only studied in real life?! For example, I saw this piece by Ted Noten, and seeing it in a magazine you would never understand that the scale of the piece is actually about the size of your hand, so much bigger than I thought. Plus there were so many artists represented that I haven’t seen before, so it was great to start to see new work but emerging artists, and see new series of work from artists that I love. I saw work by Sarah Trooper, who I met when I visited SUNY New Paltz, when looking at Grad Schools and I was actually there when everyone was criting her Two Car Garage piece. Awesome job Sarah! Congrats on getting into such a great show. You are amazing, and I hope to be amazing like you one day.

Schmuck in general is kind of a mystery. There isn’t a fixed place that everything occurs like SNAG or SOFA, its more like a week when there is a handwerrke trade expo happening – which includes everything from industrial design to culinary design - and the Schmuck exhibition is just a small part hidden in the back of the expo center. The work is truly amazing and well worth the travel over here, but much different than what I was expecting. But what is exciting about this time is that all the jewelry galleries in the area open up with new and exciting shows. Today in addition to Schmuck, we visited Galerie Biro who was having an exhibition of Andi Gut and a show called Lollipops in the wood – bites from the everyday. I didn’t take any photos of the Andi Gut show, but what I liked most about these tiny carved nylon rings is the way they were presented, attached to metal dentistry tools that telescoped out to extend the pieces into the gallery so they demanded to be viewed. The Lollipops show was a bunch of neckpieces and brooches that were made from dental plaster and referenced the mouth or chewing in some way by Mia Maljojoki.

Here are some horrible images of wonderful work I saw today, but don’t worry, I have overspent my budget on amazing books, so I have much better images of the work now in my personal library.










Beate Eismann











Stephanie Jendis








Q Hisabashi Shibata









Renata Vietzova

Tomorrow we plan on hitting the gallery tour. Three shows we definitely have to see are:

JAMES Exchange. Jewellery And Metalwork Enquiry Show


and look how awesome the back of the card is?? Little punch outs..really great.



WITTENBRINK ZEIGHT SCHMUCK. A show of four students of Otto Kunzli.
what an amazing card.



In Transit.
A show with Helen Carnac, whom I met and have had some great conversations with before. I probably wont see her there, but it will be nice to go and see her work.

Alright. We are off to the disco. Arg! Germany is amazing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love this entry, yep, I spy on you from time to time.