Mindscape
Through the city's lens
2016
(Legnica Silver Festival 2016 - selected for the exhibition)
This piece is focused on the theme of the 'CITY', the theme of the 25th Legnica International Jewellery Competition.
CITY: A Universe of Contradictions
A city is one of the grandest, oldest and longest lasting achievements of human civilisation.
Is it also the last?
How great is the cities power of attraction if according to the sociological and demographic
prognoses they will soon house over 80% of humanity? This tendency is ever increasing. What are
these civilisation’s creatures, these (monstro)cities? What is the nature of their phenomenon?
A city is an autotelic structure, territorial-urban and social, holding together all the man’s virtues and
flaws, a sum of individual thoughts, desires and passions, all locked up in a reusable Pandora’s box.
A city is an emanation of contradictions: good and evil, freedom and oppression, order and chaos,
calculation and passion, power and weakness, beauty and ugliness, rationalism and spontaneity,
community and hostility, safety and invigilation, riches and poverty, creativity and consumption, love
and hate, radicalism and compromise, comfort and burden, the elites and the anonymous masses,
change and stability.
A city is an intellectual concept which lives its own live, but, at the same time, a creation as exact,
practical and self-sufficient as any natural ecosystem.
A city is an element of narcotic beauty and effects, the opposite of indolent peace and morbid
boredom; a synonymous of haste and superficiality, countless impressions and illusions, a mecca and
an El Dorado, or an apocalypse for those flocking in hope of a better life. A city is our HEAVEN and
HELL, our universe.
/// Resurrection
2009-2012
(Tremplin Prize 2009 / WCC-BF)
I like to create surprise in the “spectator’s” eyes while approaching strong and bearing themes.
What a better way to succeed than using humor and dolls?
The “Resurrection” collection is the result of this philosophy; my own little touch of Belgian surrealism, at the image of painter Magritte. An ear wearing ears, an eye worn by a finger, a leg and an arm becoming a necklace, a sleeping face as a bracelet, a sound box alternately crying, laughing, calling ‘dad’ and ‘mum’, two hands inviting you to play with a ball...
The approached themes in this collection are clearly the game, the second degree but also topical subjects like recycling by giving a second life to ancient dolls. I tried in my own way to restore the prestige of those used, damaged and abandoned toys which are quickly forgotten in our present consumer society. That’s how the adventure of those recycled, interactive jewels started. They aim at rethinking our own body and the way we perceive it. The game symbolizes childhood and its memories but also open-mindedness.
/// Contemporary Jewelry
/// Bijou Contemporain
JAD /// Jewel + Art + Design
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