Golden Fruit

Raisins, named the golden fruit by their sellers, are a sweet, fast and healthy snack. The box shows a cowboy-like figure, and jeweler Aline Vandeplas associates him with a gold-digger looking for a quick buck. He is someone relying on fast nutrition for survival, therefore the snack has to be easy to carry around, and always ready for consumption. This makes the snack as valuable as the gold he is after. To Aline Vandeplas there is no such thing as easy money and a penny saved is a penny earned. Most of the time it wasn’t the gold-digger who struck gold, but their wily suppliers. This is why she exhibits the Golden Fruit boxes in the same way gold bars normally are stacked.
Aline’s fascination with the word gold on the package, and the story behind it, does not stop there. She transformed the ‘golden fruit’ into jewelry, a necklace with a cast silver raisin as a pendant. The choice of silver, as material to work with, fits well with the raisins. Looking at its market value, silver is the snack version of metals traditionally used in jewelry. The golden fruit is taken out of its box and made into something easy to carry around and always ready to wear.

For several years Belgium’s’ Aline Vandeplas has been collecting everything on her path referring to the word ‘gold’. She created stories around her finds and like the work described above, she managed to turn it into something completely new. This resulted into the exhibition 'Gold-up'.
The exhibition lasts until April 25th at Silke&theGallery, in Antwerp, Belgium, which is also featured at Klimt02.