Art jewelry has come closer to the art world. Jewelry’s ability to communicate and bear witness of great craftsmanship makes them works of art. Here there are parallels to artistically oriented photography.
Internationally, art jewelry has developed into an independent art form, known as Studio or Art Jewelry. Every year the major exhibition, Schmuck, is held in Munich with around 50 different exhibitions around the city, and the Die Neue Sammlung exhibits, in a large jewelry section, jewelry as art. The Museum of Arts and Design in New York has a permanent jewelry section with modern jewelry, since its move to Columbus Circle.
Artists from different genre have, for centuries, found inspiration in nature. Flowers, leave, butterflies, snowflakes and birds return as motifs in traditional jewelry.
Today, often unconventional materials are used in art jewelry, where the absolute value in weight and material cost are of lesser importance. There is a beauty in the excitement between attraction and renunciation that jewelry artists can use in artistic idioms and choice of materials.
In Sweden, women have taken over art jewelry and now completely dominate it.
Konsthandeln has, in collaboration with Inger Wästberg, chosen to show how nature has inspired the Swedish jewelry artists of the 2000s. Participating in the exhibition are Karin Roy Andersson, Ingrid Bärndal, Susanne Forsström, Agnieszka Knap, Hanna Ljungberg, Åsa Lockner, Märta Mattsson and Åsa Skogberg.
“Why do women want to bear expensive mass produced jewelry when we have artists that make unique objects that are both more interesting and cheaper? People that would never want to hang a reproduction on their walls at home, wear mass productions on their bodies,”
says Inger Wästberg, who curated the exhibition together with Konsthandeln.
Art jewelry is shown in concert with Stina Brockman’s sensual nude studies.
Brockman, born 1951, made her breakthrough as a photographer in the group exhibition “Bländande bilder” (Dazzling Images) at the Fotografiska Museum in 1981.
The exhibition revealed a new era in photography, where you left the 1970s documented and often polemic photography behind. Brockman worked with an artistic spirit, where individual expression as well as excellent craftsmanship and photographic tradition are central. The unpretentious motifs and ways of approaching them, gave rise to the concept of “intimism”. The sensualism that distinguishes Stina Brockman’s work is particularly evident in a series of nude studies from the middle of the 1980s, which are now being shown at Konsthandeln. In saturated, unique vintage prints, the body’s contours emerge in a picturesque manner. During her career, Stina Brockman has worked with our relationship to body and nature.
Stina Brockman and jewelry artists are united on the practical plane in the joy of the actual handicraft – the perfect photographic print and the carefully formed expression in a piece of jewelry. On another plane there are the erogenous zones on the body as the starting point and nature as a constant source of inspiration.
Vernissage Thursday May 17-20, 2012 | The Lounge in the Konstnärshuset. Smålandsgatan 7, Stockholm.
Seminar: Tuesday May 17, 6 PM with Åsa Skogberg.
Organizer: Konsthandeln in collaborations with Konstnärshuset.
Participants:
Karin Roy Andersson
Ingrid Bärndal
Susanne Forsström
Agnieszka Knap
Hanna Liljenberg
Åsa Lockner
Märta Mattsson
Åsa Skogberg
Above: Märta Mattsson ”Black Beetle” and ”Beetle Juice”
On the left: Märta Mattsson Mittensmycke and on the right: Agnieszka Knap
Above: Åsa Lockner
Above: Susanne Forsström