MagazineReport

#mindMADders at the Munich Jewellery Week

The Munich Jewellery Week is probably the most important fair for artistic jewellery and is most certainly the place to be for collectors, gallery owners and designers every year. The Master students of Object & Jewellery from PXL-MAD School of Arts will also be present. They will provide us with a complete day-to-day report on what you can call jewellery-Marathon of Munich. 

The Munich Jewellery Week is for the contemporary jewel what the Salone del Mobile is for design. The trade fair was founded in 1959 and since then has been held every year in the Munich Fair (Messe). The Messe is a typical congress-centre similar to Fiera Milano where, during the Salone del Mobile, every self-respecting furniture brand is represented. Here, the International Handwork Fair will run from 7 to 13 March. The jewellery section focuses on 3 main themes. On one hand Meister der Moderne (Modern Masters) and on the other hand the well-known ‘Schmuck’ (jewels); the third is a showcase of young talents that are curated by ‘Talente’ (Talents).

Pressure cooker 

Because the entire world of contemporary jewellery – from leading designers to renowned gallery owners and international art schools – are gathered here during that one week in Munich, the term pressure cooker comes to mind by analogy of the Salone del Mobile. The Jewel is hijacking the city during this period. All kinds of side programs arise among the main event. Just as Salone Satellite brought some breathing space to the design circus from the main exhibition site to the city for a bit, Munich Jewellery Week covers more than the presentations in the Messe. To get a grip on the many galleries, museums and temporary locations that organise something, the organization Current Obsession was established some time ago. Marina Elenskaya and Sarah Mesritz, neatly mapped everything under Current Obsession and simultaneously developed a platform to support and promote the contemporary jewel that goes beyond Munich alone.

The Lovelace  

One of the initiatives of Current Obsession during the seven-day jewellery marathon of Munich is an interpretation of The Lovelace. The Lovelace is a unique hotel that opened in 2017 in the city centre but can only be used as a hotel until 2019. It covers a total of 4,800 m2 and also presents itself as a hotspot with all sorts of events and exhibitions. It is here where the Master students of Object & Jewellery from PXL-MAD School of Arts will show their work.

Contrary to the past, where the presentation was a mobile take on presenting, this presentation will be fixed to one location. The previous years, the students discovered the city while presenting their creations from out of a backpack, a clever find under the impulse of teacher Gésine Hackenberg. Later they took on the city streets under the name MADexhibitionist, presenting their creations from underneath their jackets. This approach made them a force to be reckoned with and put PXL-MAD on the map as an interesting and innovative education. Whether the current Masters will follow in the footsteps of their predecessors will be seen in their daily reports from the #mindMADder.

Janika Slowik (24) – She grew up in Nürnberg and studied `jewellery and everyday objects’ in Pforzheim. Now she is doing her masters degree in Hasselt. In her work she is focussing on light and reflection and the relationship between body and the material.

Luisa Quartin (20) – She first discovered jewellery when she was still in high school in Lisbon and after that went on to do her bachelor in jewellery and body ornaments at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery school in Florence. At the moment she is focusing on transformation cycles and how everything has to come to an end for new things to take life. She works with daily objects and transforms them into jewellery pieces in a way that, in the future, they can be reused again.

Camille El-Achkar (27) – She finished her bachelor in Object and Jewellery in 2017 and is currently following the Master program. In her pieces she is searching for the meaning of vanity in jewellery. By combining all kinds of materials she creates tactile and fragile pieces.

Gertjan Vandezande (24) – After studying Architecture in highschool, he went on to scale things down and took up jewellery design and watchmaking. He has a hands-on mentality and looks into the material for inspiration.

Selien Lips (22) – She finished her bachelor degree at PXL-MAD in 2017. Now she’s doing her master. Characteristic for her work are constructions, lines, rhythm, a duality between the organic and the geometrical forms and the duality between light and shadow. Turning the tradition of jewellery into a personal, contemporary interpretation is the theme of her most recent work.

Hester Daems – In her master project she focusses on the beauty of the inside of the human body, the shapes of the bones and the structure of it. she questions what is real and how you can change it with surgery.

Day 4

“Our morning at the exhibition space was much more relaxed then the days before, because usually a lot of people go to the IHM fair on Saturday. Still we had some visitors and interesting conversations and could focus on making our last…

Read More

Day 3

“Today the group split and half of us stayed at the exhibition keeping contact with people and giving buttons. There was a nice moment were we got to teach a little child a tinny bit about the concept of jewelry and our…

Read More

Day 2

“Our day started again in the lovelace hotel at our exhibition place. People were coming here to get to another talk organized by current obsession and on their way there they all had to pass our exhibition, where we occupied them for…

Read More

Day 1

“The first buttons are made! Early in the morning people started slowly arriving and as they saw our exhibition the feedback started. Some were very curious about materials used and the way they were treated and others wanted to know more about…

Read More

#mindMADders – Day 1

“We started the day full of energy ready for the long day ahead. We went to the Lovelace hotel very early in the morning to start building our group installation for #mindMADders. We had a lot to do, so we divided ourselves…

Read More