12.3-15.3: 11-18h
15.3.: 11-12.30h Talk by writer and academic Julia Wild, crystal grower Daniel Rytz and jewellery artist Sofie Boons
Featuring work and research by Sofie Boons, University of Applied Sciences Trier/Idar-Oberstein ‚Bling It‘ workshop participants, and KÜR Project/Gabriele Space artists.
Not all that glitters is gold – but is it therefore any less valuable? In a world overflowing with materials, why do we deem some as desirable, genuine, and useful, while others are dismissed as cheap, fake, and disposable? This exhibition, inspired by the themes investigated in Sofie Boons’ practice-based research on Neo-gemstones (often referred to as synthetics), the practice of urban mining, transmutational re-use and the social construct of value are centred to provoke.
When waste rubies can be grown in-situ in jewellery, garnets can be engineered to glow in the dark and diamonds can be mined from industry to bling things, shouldn’t we look beyond labels and rethink what we consider unvaluable? Positioning Sofie’s artistic outcomes in conversation with the work of students and starting artists of the Department of Gemstone and Jewellery TUAS, GABRIELE SPACE and KÜR Project, the exhibition invites you to inspect these objects as productive objections and expand your own material-realisations.If you want to join the conversation and delve deeper into the concepts and practices of urban mining, neo-gemstones and crystal growth, Join us for a morning of inspiring talks by writer and academic Julia Wild (TUAS), crystal grower Daniel Rytz (BREVALOR), and jewellery artist and researcher Sofie Boons (CFPR) at 11 AM, Saturday, 15 March.
