From September 26 until October 13, 2013
at Art gallery PUTTI

Italian contemporary jewellery exhibition

FANTASTICI! Contemporary Italian Jewellery

In autumn – the gallery is displaying major Italian contemporary jewellery exhibition “FANTASTICI! Contemporary Italian Jewellery”. This exhibition is a collaboration between Art Gallery PUTTI and the Association of Italian Contemporary jewellery AGC (Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo).
An international group exhibition “Conceptual Jewellery” in 2011 with Italian artists exhibiting their work in the Art Gallery PUTTI  is view-pointed as the beginning of a friendly cooperation foundation with the association’s AGC representatives in Italy.
Italian Association for Contemporary jewellery AGC is a noteworthy platform for both emerging and already acknowledged Italian jewellery artists. It is a non-profit organization, established in Trieste in 2004 in order to develop and promote contemporary art jewellery. It entails artistic research, renewal of the ornament ideas and experimentation with new materials and technologies, as well as maintaining the historical tradition of skills and abilities. The exhibition “FANTASTICI! Contemporary Italian Jewellery”, is understandably presumed to become a unique event in the Latvian cultural space.
Stage design created and set by an internationally renowned fashion designer duo MAREUNROL’S (Mārīte Mastiņa un Rolands Pēterkops).www.mareunrols.com
The 22 Italian jewellery artists participating in the exhibition are Catalina Brenes, Luisa Bruni, Maria Cristina Bellucci, Elisabetta Dupre, Anna Fornari, Emma Francesconi, Maria Rosa Franzin, Manuela Gandini, Heidemarie Herb, Giancarlo Montebello, Gigi Mariani, Paola Mirai, Rita Marcangelo, Margherita de Martino Norante, Alessandro Petrolati, Kellie Riggs, Barbara Uderzo, Ute Kolar, Eugenia Ingegno, Patrizia Bonati, Maura Biamonti, Adrean Bloomard.

(https://www.agc-it.org)

              

Interview with Gigi Mariani (In Latvian)

Art Jewelry Forum interview with Agita Putāne 

Alessandro Petrolati

My approach to the world of jewel is through learning what are the techniques of the Italian Goldsmith School. By applying this knowledge the experimental work captures the components of traditional handcrafts, able to provide the customers with useful elements to the reading of the work of a handmade jewel.

 

Adrean Bloomard

In my works, my aim is that of conveying the aura of an object that is thousands of years old, yet relates to the times we live in. I have carried out research relative to the study of historical elements that remain constant in time and have explored the potential that objects from the past have of evoking sensations, memories and the consequent impact they have on us. I believe that objects ‘belonging’ to history are part of our formative experience, representing our cultural DNA.

Anna Fornari

Being used to walking around  long lived cities, like Rome, Perouse, Florence,  I discover, beside the familiar, visible and evident town, variously shaped grids, that are well set into the tediousness of the many streets. I constantly pay great attention to the city grids, the gully gratings, whose shapes  seem to be fascinating and seductive but scaring at the same time. They constitute the content of my photos, of my meditations and of my jewels, thus further defining my work on “cavities”.

Barbara Uderzo

Idea. I create objects to wear arising in particular from intuitions and ideas. My collections of rings, for instance, include the blob rings – plastic entanglement withholding objets trouvés, the succulent rings – containing little plants to water. Among the necklaces, instead, are the wavelet chains and the rockies chain, all in silver or the bijoux-chocolat – jewels made of chocolate.

Catalina Brenes

Im always working with moldable and sequential materials. The need for series is evident in my work. Theres not a lonely piece. I’ve grown in a big family, the eager for fraternity, for company is markable in my outcome. Never the less the subject, the search for balance and tranquility is a constant. The fluid completeness of nature is my north. Like the environment that stimulate me, I seek to evoke timelessness.

Elisabetta Duprè

A formal lexicon, with few essential elements, a rigorous execution and limited chromaticism: all elements that form the language from which the jewellery takes shape. The study of music and contemporary dance guide Duprè in the attention to shapes, rhythmic and spatial connotations of changes

in materials. Her works are characterized by the meticulous elaboration of detail, by repeated use of forms with minor variations.

Emma Francesconi

Screws, washers and bolts are not simply hardware objects, loads of a semantic content that comes from using them, but they possess an intrinsic force in the design and shape that turns them into beauty and possibility: that’s why I use them naked, without contamination and without roof or combinations of other objects, when I create my bijoux moteurs.

 

Eugenia Ingegno

I seek objects, I accumulate and break them up to extract what is essential for me: a fragment just enough to trigger a memory.
I catch the shape impressing the material into the mold as the photographer captures the image impressing light on the film. I exploit the effect or illusion of reality produced by the use of this method. I use casting and pouring materials like metals, resins and silicons to fill shapes with a new, unexpected content. My jewels are trace of possible lives, memories of something that did not happen but that could have happened.

GianCarlo Montebello

A series of ‘superlight’ necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings that suggest a return to a decidedly ‘classical’ repertory of body ornaments. There’s nothing at all bizarre about these forms: the links of the chains come one right after the other, each identical to the one before it; and with the bracelets, your wrist seems simply to be wearing some sort of draughtsman’s tool.

Gigi Mariani

I have been a goldsmith for over twenty-five years in Modena, Italy. Since I was a young man, I’ve been interested and attracted to metals and it’s infinite capabilities, especially it’s overlapping, oxidation, and sequences of layers. With my work, I try to transfer every day emotions into contemporary jewelry and unique pieces in a simple, informal and spontaneous way. This permits me to develop new situations and the art appreciators to develop  feelings from these situations. My goal is to move from the concept of simple jewelry, to a larger concept of sculpture and art piece.

 

Heidemarie Herb

My creations are inspired by thoughts on the relationship between man and nature in all its expressive possibilities: colours evoking feelings and thoughts, sounds, the life cycle from birth to death, mysteries and secrets concealed by nature. Movements, forms, lightness and colours in harmony with each other are important in each work.

Kellie Riggs

My work is not ornament, it is about ornament. It is informed by the past, fueled by an interest in contemporizing our visual history. My curiosity in what came before me closely relates to the inherent fundamentals of adornment as a concept; I explore the human body’s direct relationship to architecture, as time has honored the idea that the human body deserves parallel exaltation. Using borrowed principles from the likes of Michelangelo and Borromini and their decorative yet structural articulation of interior environments, I aim to exploit the body as a site and surface able to be similarly defined.

Luisa Bruni

My background and my close proximity to the art world has always influenced my research in the field of ornaments providing me a better medium to model my dreams. “Jewels” to me are only the visible part of something that I always carry inside me. The poetic element of which is imbued with all my work is made up of images, sometimes in sequence of moments, the slow passing of time, where, in the space between looking the piece and reading the title, is founded my jewel, as the image of a haiku.

Manuela Gandini

I’m an endless experimenter with new materials and technologies and the aim of my work is to create contemporary jewellery for unconventional people. My idea of jewellery is determined by various factors: contemporary style, the aesthetic rigour of shape, the clean combination of materials, colours and textures, the innovative production techniques, the precise hand work.

Margherita de Martino Norante

I like making single standing pieces of jewellery. They are all different but have a common starting point: the idea that jewellery talks about the wearer. A piece of jewelry is a powerful instrument of communication. It is worn on the body or on top of clothing so it’s directly between our selves and the world. Not only is the first thing to be seen, but more than clothes, it is superfluous and one makes a conscientious decision to wear it.

Maria Cristina Bellucci

For several years I worked as theatre costume and accessories maker, creating also a wide range of jewellery for stage use.
I developed a strong interest for contemporary jewellery and I dedicated myself to it. What characterized my early work was the use of very thin metal sheets and wires, experimenting with hollowness and fullness. In later work, I started using even thinner metal sheets, as if working with paper sheets, creating pieces that were voluminous and light at the same time.
My more recent work is characterised by having more solid looking elements and also by the introduction of colour, not previously explored.

Maria Rosa Franzin

Thinking  about the object, sketching her thoughts and then letting time pass to encourage them to become concrete shapes. My pieces are the result of a close confrontation between thought expression in terms of signs and its actual translation into three- dimensional objects by working flat metal plate.

The pictorial instinct is in the way shapes and in the implementation phase, become graphic signs, a brushstroke, mark, scratch, specks on the “skin” of metal.

Maura Biamonti

Maura Biamonti was born in Sanremo, Italy. After more than a decade devoted to dance, theatre and photography, she began after the late 80s her jewellery experimentation.

In 1992, she opened her studio in Ventimiglia, Italy. In 2000, she moved to Antibes, South France, while continuing to work in her laboratory in Italy. From 2010 onwards, she started to work in South France. By early 2011, she opened a studio in Biot, a picturesque and very popular medieval village on the French Riviera. Since 2008, she is a member of the AGC (“Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo”).

Paola Mirai

Everything starts with an idea, when Paola Mirai, in front of Ayers Rock in Australia, has a striking inspiration of Brancusian memory: creating beautiful shapes for the human joy. Her research starts in 2004, beside a window blessed by the sun and looking towards the Atlantic Ocean. Now her activity continues in a workshop located in a typically milanese court, close to the Navigli area. It takes five years for Paola Mirai to find the matter that expresses her artistic flow, five years that lead her through the discovery of different shapes and essences until she creates her philosophers’ gold: a pure and perfectly transparent material.

Patrizia Bonati

Bonati’s work is typically  Italian in the use of materials, as she mostly avails herself of gold. She creates her own alloys producing interesting colour variations. Emblematic of her work is the flexible metal and springy wire obtained by means of hammering and twisting techniques. She often incorporates white enamel into her pieces, complimenting the gold surface of the metal. She is drawn to the concept of movement and trasformation, and likes the idea anything can charge.

Rita Marcangelo

I am particularly fascinated by materials that can change during the making process. I like the idea of being able to change the original structure of the material so that a metamorphosis takes place.

For some time now, I have been working with textile that I burn and treat with acrylics. In the same way as an artist in front of a blank canvas, I start with a piece of white or black silk, and the rest takes place during the making process.

Ute Kolar

Ute Kolar’s earlier work was very intricate and incorporated more solid structures. Her work has evolved in time, acquiring a visually light and airy quality as well as becoming physically weightless in spite of its volume. She enjoys playing with the contrast between volume and weightlessness as it creates surprise in the viewer when the piece is first held or worn. Her main inspiration at the moment comes from nature. This can be observed in the “tree” and “flower” rings, or “grass” brooches. Kolar uses a great array of skills to her advantage  in her work.

Arterritory about exhibition “FANTASTICI!” (link)

anothertravelguide.lv about exhibition “Fantastici!” (link)

klimt02.net about exhibition “Fantastici!” (link)

old.puaro.lv about exhibition “Fantastici!” (link)

vetomagazine.com about exhibition “Fantastici!” (link)

Exhibition opening: