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Munich Jewelry Week (MJW) is like fungi, with exhibitions popping up all through the town.
For a lot of of these holding these exhibits, MJW means organizing an exhibition overseas in an area they’ve solely seen on-line, with restricted setup time. Making a scenography entails not solely choosing supplies which are simply transportable or regionally out there, but in addition striving to face out amongst many occasions, all whereas making certain the presentation helps the work.
Confronted with quite a few challenges, and alternatives, exhibitors experiment with presentation methods. MJW is a playground.
This textual content discusses a choice of MJW24 exhibitions. This isn’t an entire overview, nor a best-of. As a substitute, if provides insights into totally different presentation strategies. Ideally, I might have explored extra exhibitions, however that, too, is typical of MJW: navigating an enormous array of decisions.
Drops of the Juice, at The Tiger Room, February 28–March 23, 2024
This exhibition confirmed Danni Chen’s works from previous years.
As I enter the exhibition, I scan its association: a sculpture resembling a child mattress created from rice crackers and lead, a choker encasing an asparagus suspended towards the wall, a pill enjoying a video whereas serving as a platform for steel tongue items. On the left, a colourful wall composition catches my eye. It encompasses a multitude of textiles, jewellery, and smartphones. One display depicts a mouth choosing raspberries from steel pins.
Chen describes this set up as a spatial catalog of her inventive works. One print exhibits a hand holding a spiked object, able to crush a bunch of grapes. This piece is a part of Chen’s “fruit tortures,” displayed on a desk throughout the gallery. The artist factors out different items: “These balls can stone fruit, whereas that curler crushes raspberries.”
Contrasting the desk’s pristine white material and black chairs, Chen’s items shimmer within the gallery’s fluorescent lights. Sometimes, a mysterious sound emerges from beneath, perforating the white dice’s membrane.
C and the Artist, at Versus Gallery, February 27–March 3, 2024
Since my first go to to an exhibition curated by Christian Hoedl in an vintage store years in the past, attending his MJW shows has change into a practice for me. What pursuits me is his technique of inserting modern jewellery inside distinctive interiors.
For this newest iteration, six artists’ works had been offered: Marcus Biesecke, Marlène Burguet, Patrícia Domingues, Sophie Hanagarth, Philip Sajet, and Tim Udvardi-Lakos.
Hoedl collaborated carefully with Florian Specht, the gallery proprietor, to pick out and organize the gallery’s furnishings to current the jewellery and the objects. Moreover, Hoedl invited Karen Irmer to exhibit her pictures, which, as Specht notes, “appears to remodel all through the day, responding to the play of sunshine like a movie.” An interesting interaction certainly happens, with the designer lamps casting a delicate glow on the jewellery, the wood cupboards, their flowing nerves.
Hoedl’s strategy encourages reflection on the connection between jewellery and its context, leaving me to ponder how a setting influences the viewer’s notion and engagement with the work.
Mystic Cubicles: Crafted Whispers, at AkademieGalerie, February 21–March 3, 2024
Positioned in a subway station, a glass field amid the perpetual movement of escalators, advertisements, and commuters, AkademieGalerie provides an enchanting setting for artwork. Standing nonetheless on this turmoil, I peer by way of the gallery’s home windows on the exhibition exhibiting works by college students from Klasse Prof. Karen Pontoppidan für Schmuck und Gerät, Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, with work by Chung-Yueh Yuan, Martha Schmidt, Sylvia Berté, Isu Choi, Regina Rupp, Nora Reitelshöfer, Suvi Tupola, Maria Eugenia Muñoz, Yegyu Shin, Jonas Möller, Florian Clemens Meier, Anna Avits, and Julius Fest.
Anthracite-colored pedestals appear to hover above the bottom, casting LED reflections on the ground. The doorway is adorned with blue drapes and light-weight garlands, the exhibition’s title whimsically written and framed in gold. These decisions are … fascinating, I discover myself considering, questioning concerning the want for elaborate decorations and their connection to the floating plinths.
Transferring among the many pedestals, I observe the works. In the back of the house, “Voices of the Artisans” features a collection of artists’ statements. As I learn, my focus shifts between the texts, the works, the plinths … and a pc displaying a video.
And all of a sudden it clicks. The display reveals a dialog with ChatGPT. Intensive lists of concepts and choices for curating the exhibition scroll by.
I’m curious to what extent the exhibitors adopted ChatGPT’s directions. Did the workforce step in to make sure the presentation helps the works, reasonably than overshadow it with a random extravaganza? Reflecting on the potential affect of totally embracing AI’s steering on the work’s presentation and notion, I wonder if this fascinating experiment might have been taken to extra excessive lengths.
Artist Jonas Möller sheds gentle on the exhibition’s course of. The workforce fed ChatGPT details about ideas and supplies to provoke dialogue. The exhibition’s title, idea, and design emerged from the dialog that offered probably the most complete details about their work and the modern jewellery subject. As a result of they needed the presentation to prioritize their inventive positions, the artists determined to intervene if the AI’s options contradicted their guidelines, put their work in a destructive gentle, or exceeded their assets relating to time, price range, and house.[1]
For the exhibitors, co-curating with AI revealed ChatGPT’s slim understanding of knickknack as a medium for positive artwork, a limitation they see echoed in most people’s notion of knickknack. “Even after explaining our work, the AI nonetheless prompt portraying us as expert professionals creating beneficial items utilizing valuable supplies.”[2]
Importable/M.A.Y.A (Unwearable/M.A.Y.A), at Institut Français, February 26–March 3, 2024
Intrigued by its title and images, this was one of many exhibitions I used to be most curious to discover. It options work by Marie-caroline Locquet.
Scaffolding constructions assist translucent wax sheets, on which Locquet’s jewellery is displayed. Alongside the partitions, paraffin sheets with brooches showcased on the heart hold from chains embedded within the materials, reaching all the way down to the bottom. Chokers are offered with their wood pins extending upward, but seamlessly closing right into a circle across the neck.
A choice of texts by Victor Dumiota French author whom Locquet invited to collaborate with after she learn one in every of his novels, is proven alongside the jewellery that impressed them. Loquet, in flip, drew inspiration from Dumiot’s writing to supply a brand new piece, which is offered adjoining to the literary work.
The strong iron tubes and malleable wax set towards a backdrop of baroque environment, full with chandeliers and decorative wallpaper, evoke an intriguing stress. The monumental and the bantam. Energy and delicacy.
Treasure Peninsula, at tremendous+Centercourt, February 26–March 4, 2024
This present options graduate college students from the Division of Crafts at Seoul Nationwide College, South Korea: Hyemin Jang, Pilho Kang, Hyemin Ahn, Yeonmi Lee, Yoojung Kim, Yebin Kim, Haesun Shin, Shang Gao, Jixuan Lu, Yujin Okay, Ziyune Kim, Soohyun Chou, Dongryeol Yoo, Heesun Kim, Jieun Yoo, Heesu Kim, Dahee Park, Kyuman Hong, Miseo Choi, and Hyeokjae Lee.
A big honeycomb cardboard quantity occupies a lot of the house, serving as a platform for presenting jewellery and objects.
Impressed by a peninsula, excavations, and digging, the show metaphorically represents uncovering and revealing the scholars’ skills. It takes on a landscape-like high quality, with some sections raised and others lowered. The archaeological theme is strengthened by the exhibition’s leaflet and numbered tags accompanying the displayed works. These tags correspond to a grid of enterprise playing cards positioned on a pedestal on the entrance.
The cardboard—sustainable, gentle, robust—extends onto the windowsill, showcasing collection of knickknack. Within the nook, two stools crafted from the identical materials full the setup.
Wunderkammer, on the Orangerie, February 28–March 3, 2024
This group exhibition, curated by Tobias Birgersson and Prof. Heiner Zimmermann, exhibits works by 24 artists: Tobias Birgersson, Heiner Zimmermann, Karl Hallberg, Lina Söderberg, Marcello Ferreira, Emille deBlanche, Jokum Lind Jensen, Karolina Hägg, David Clark, Jorge Manilla, Adam Hawk, Rick Smith, John Grayson, Andrew Hayes, Seth Gould, Sabine Straub, Klara Birgersson, Urmas Lüüs, Nils Trace, Piret Hirv, Eve Margus-Villems, Johannes Postlmayr, Janne Peltokangas, and Daniel Strandow.
I’m curious what referencing the historic format of the Wunderkammer[3] might imply for a recent craft exposition.
A big shelving unit presents a variety of latest craft items and curious discovered objects alongside objects akin to cardboard containers and gloves. Guests are inspired to actively seek for the artworks amidst the multitude of objects and supplies. Each handmade and located objects are labeled with archival tags that includes fictional and infrequently humorous descriptions, with a small corresponding quantity revealing the creator’s title.
Curator Prof. Zimmermann explains that the exhibition represents the research program Metallic Artwork at Campus Steneby, Gothenburg College, Sweden. It consists of works from academics, alumni, and exterior professionals. The artists had been invited to indicate one in every of their works becoming the Wunderkammer theme, together with a discovered object sparking creativeness about its function.
To deal with the problem of exhibiting a various vary of labor, the curators opted for the Wunderkammer format. “Identified for its range and curiosity, a Wunderkammer invitations the viewers to research the displayed items.”[4]
Quite than filling a small room with objects, as is the case within the historic cupboards of curiosities, the scale of the Orangerie impressed them to create “a contemporary Wunderkammer within the type of an archive or storage, akin to these present in a museum or space for storing.”[5]
By curating an expertise that brings a range of objects into relation, the organizers purpose to share not solely the outcomes of crafts but in addition ignite curiosity about its processes and strategies. Understanding the intricacies of how and why one thing is made can improve the appreciation of the works, as Prof. Zimmermann argues. Making exhibitions is their try in asserting the relevance of crafts, each previous, current, and future, Birgersson concludes.[6]
As all of a sudden as MJW exhibitions seem, most of them finish simply as rapidly. But, the worldwide community they emerge from continues rising. Just like fungi dispersing spores, these exhibitions go away behind traces—seeds that take root elsewhere.
My suitcase brimming with flyers and postcards of all of the exhibitions I visited, or hoped to attend, and my coronary heart full of pleasure, I return house, marking the dates for subsequent yr’s anticipated fairy ring.
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[1] From an e mail dialog with Jonas Möller, March 11 and 12, 2024.
[2] Ibid.
[3] As I mirrored on the modern significance of the Wunderkammer whereas scripting this essay, I grew to become conscious of the potential undertones of colonial narratives that could be strengthened by this format. Whereas acknowledging the significance of such a debate, delving into it additional exceeds the scope of this essay.
[4] From an e mail dialog with Prof. Heiner Zimmermann and Tobias Birgersson on March 11, 2024.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
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