EXPO ‘Body Language ?’ – Stedelijk museum, Amsterdam (NL) – 3 Oct. 2014 – 3 Oct. 2015
Body Language? Exhibition / 03 Oct 2014 – 03 Oct 2015 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Stedelijk museum
The Museum shows to the public a Collection presentation, on view in gallery 0.25. This collection presentation focuses on the human body. The selection comprises jewelry that literally measure the human body, and pieces whose shape is based on the human body—on sexual characteristics, to be precise.
Body Language? – Display of the collection at the showcases of the Stedelijk Museum Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
This collection presentation focuses on the human body. The selection comprises jewelry that literally measure the human body, and pieces whose shape is based on the human body—on sexual characteristics, to be precise. The designs that comment on the notion of “human measurements”, for instance “the ideal woman”, are highly conceptual. Some designs, such as those that compel the body to assume a new shape, are also ambivalent. But what kind of message is jewelry in the form of penises, breasts, nipples or testicles trying to convey? Irony? An invitation? Are the pieces intended to excite or shock? Each culture has its own forms of body adornment, often worn to communicate status (wealth or group affiliation) or sexual availability.
In the late ’60s, young European jewelry designers began to reject the function of jewelry as status symbol (the pearl necklace, for instance). Their alternatives, which took the form of unorthodox shapes and materials, were a visual protest against the established order, parallel to the sexual revolution of the day. In the decades that followed, jewelry designers continued to explore similar themes, particularly jewelry’s relationship to the body, youth culture, and eroticism and sexuality. These trends are also visible in the Stedelijk collection.
Artist list : Dinie Besems, Gijs Bakker, Iris Eichenberg, Ruudt Peters, Sally Marsland, Vádav Cigler
Ruudt Peters Brooch: Xanthosis, 1997 Silver, Sulphur 8,5 x 6,5 x 8,5 cm Lapis series
Stedelijk museum
Postbus 75082
1070 AB - Amsterdam
NETHERLANDS
mail : info@stedelijk.nl
Phone: +31 (0)20 5732 645
Tweaking a minimalist mode with great insight, Sally Marsland’s collection of objects are made to physically adorn and imaginatively enhance. Never seeking large gestures, her work is like a poem by e.e.cummings: everything is in lower case. This is evident in the sometimes abject nature of the materials she employs, plus the canny use of found objects. A pair of hollow bones , or a discarded wooden object, sit alongside the more familiar materials of the contemporary jeweller. « If one has enough milk in the house, one doesn’t go to the grocery store », observed the composer Stefan Wolpe about his own working habits. Likewise what is immediately at hand can be transformed by Marsland’s exacting vision to arrive at an object with the right contour, density of colour, surface texture…
