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PREZIOSA 2010

Firenze Preziosa, Dialoghi

Concept by Maria Cristina Bergesio

The 2010’s edition of PREZIOSA presents three masters of research jewellery: three artists, three different nationalities, a geographical line leading from North to South: Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy. Three artists who have been working for around forty years, pursuing paths that are totally different, each with a complex language, a personal and characteristic Kunstwollen, despite sharing a marked spirit of research and experimentation. The common elements to be found in their works, in different declensions, are change, metamorphosis and transformation. They also share the fact that they belong to the same generation, that they are established, recognised artists with a long experience as teachers behind them, while at the same time representing three different approaches to research in jewellery.

The three artists have been asked to select a younger artist to set up a dialogue with: the exhibition is thus driven by a “spirit of dialogue”. Not merely “talking with” but “thinking with”, “being bound by thought”: a dialogue based on the desire to understand and know the other, and to propose an approach to the reality of the research jewel through a spirit of discovery.

Each of the six artists will offer a broad and inclusive presentation of his own work, and develop dialogues between different generations, languages and contents. This relationship of dialogue will make it possible to develop broader reflections on the creative reality of the jewel, its history and its present.
The public will be able to approach the work of the six artists through the various phases of their work, listening to the conversations and reflections triggered by the encounters, and also by reading the “dialogue” in the works themselves. The public will be provided with the necessary information, while also leaving room for a personal interpretation and, above all, an emotional engagement.
The layout and the catalogue will visualise the dialogues between the various artists, exploiting multimedia tools, so that they can be viewed and enjoyed by the public.

Artists
Giampaolo Babetto (Padua, 1947)
Babetto’s work appears as a tireless and rigorous analytic investigation of form, plumbed in all its expressive and compositional possibilities. Geometry was the starting point for the development of a constructive approach to jewellery conceived as architecture, jewels that can be read in all their parts and that emanate a dense formal tension. Minimalism, architecture, but also the painting of Pontormo are just some of the sources that have nourished Babetto’s complex language, in which the quest for form is melded with technical expertise, always taken to extremes to pursue an ever-vital spirit of experimentation.
The artist chosen by Giampaolo Babetto is Helen Britton

Johanna Dahm (Basel, 1947)
The research of Johanna Dahm can be perceived as a path that, starting from an area governed by extreme rationality, then set out towards a more intangible dimension, finally coming to immerse itself in the depth of the matter. From an initial interest in serial production, on the keynote of the democratisation of the jewel in the mid 70s, in the 80s the artist moved on to investigating the jewel as event, elaborating installations and works in which there is an extensive use of light, exploited to dematerialise the object and turn it into a visible but not tangible sign on the body. The latest phase of her work is characterised by the return to the material quality of the jewel, to its links with earth and fire. The Ashanti and Fast Ashanti series consist of works conceived through a personal elaboration of traditional casting techniques, where the a priori control becomes very limited, and the gold matter is charged with a vigorous physical sensuality.
The artist chosen by Giampaolo Babetto is Andi Gut

Ruudt Peters (Naaldwijk, 1950)
In his research the jewel becomes part of a system of representation in which religions, philosophies, symbols and alchemy, combined with encounters and the suggestions of other cultures experienced during his travels, are melded, mingled and reworked, going to make up the prime matter of his works.
His jewels are organised into ‘families’ linked to a specific reference, such as for example the stage of an alchemical process for Iosis (2002) or the Kabbalah for Sefiroth (2006), and to the materials used to make them as in Lapis (1997), where the mineral powders are reworked to create a new material. Nevertheless, an overview of his work enables us to grasp the consistency of a process that has conceived the jewel as a condensate of emotions and suggestions, an object imbued with an archaic rituality while being enunciated in an idiom that is entirely contemporary.
The artist chosen by Ruudt Peters is Evert Nijland

Helen Britton (Lithgow, Australia, 1966)
Britton’s work evolves from mixing, layering, combination and assembly, actions presided over by constant supervision which gives order to the apparent chaos. The creative process passes through phases that intersect: from attentive observation of reality she moves on to focus on particular details, single elements that are collected together and carefully sifted. Thus is created what the artist calls an energy circuit, which starts with search and selection and is completed by restitution of the object to the flow through its exhibition on the body.

Andi Gut (Zug, Switzerland, 1971)
In the works of the early 90s Andi Gut concentrated on the special relationship between the jewel and the body, both by inserting real corporeal elements (teeth, nails) and by reproducing them in materials of medical origin, such as dental porcelain. Following this, his meditation shifted towards the dualistic relationship between the naturalness of form and the artificiality of the matter it is made from. Before the jewels of Andi Gut the observer is taken by a sort of rapture, in which anxiety and captivation come together.

Evert Nijland (Oldenzaal, The Netherlands, 1971)
Active since 1997, Evert Nijland has pursued a consistent endeavour of re-elaboration, transformation and new interpretation of sources of inspiration linked to the past history of art: Renaissance panels, Baroque paintings, the theme of the garland, the city of Venice. The material quality of a pictorial detail, its special luminosity, are restored to life, translated into the dimension of the jewel through a calibrated stratification of embroidered fabrics juxtaposed with stones, silver, porcelain and very often glass. In his most recent works glass, declined in its various expressive possibilities, is used in combination with silk and flock. The most strikingly three-dimensional aspect appears to be linked to a sensual accentuation of forms.  

Artist’s “Couples”
Giampaolo Babetto/Helen Britton
Johamma Dahm/Andi Gut
Ruudt Peters/Evert Nijland