Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments (Cystic Acne, Back) 2009

Jewelry is a personal business. That is one of the things that I like so much about it. It is meant to be worn, so you need to get close to it, so close it touches you. And sometimes you have to be brave for that.

That is the case with this body piece by Lauren Kalman. She is brave. She is interested in the imaged body, consumer culture, body aesthetics, and illness. She uses the personal closeness of the body for her work.

In this piece, she has replaced cystic acne with traditional jewelry. From a distance it still looks like a severe case of acne and I am quite repelled by that. From up close it shows that it is not acne, but jewelry and I feel relieved. Even closer, it becomes clear that the jewels are pierced trough the skin with acupuncture needles. That makes me feel uneasy at the least, but I also want to touch them. I am not sure if I want take them all out, or if I want to make sure they stay in place; this is what makes this work so intriguing. The fact that I can relate to the person wearing the, surely painful, body piece is exactly the point Lauren Kalman wants to make.

This artist is a member of apparat and Klimt02.

‘Schnee von gestern’ ‘single lift’ — brooch 3

All the snow we have had lately is making me think of one thing: Ski! But since I live in one of the flattest parts of the world, I’ll have to indulge in my craving in a different way. Jantje Fleischuts’ work ‘schnee von gestern’
‘single lift’ — brooch 3 will do perfectly.

The brooch is shaped like a ski lift, the one thing that gives me the ‘I am about to ski’- feeling. After all the dressing up, getting everybody ready, passing the ticket control, hoisting ski’s and poles into the lift, the lift steadily rises, sometimes with a bit of a dangle, to the top of the mountain where slopes are waiting for us. I can imagine how the brooch, when worn, would dangle on the pin as if on a cable, a fun detail to me.

The work is made from a real ski, satisfying me in a sensatory way. Putting on the brooch would make the ski- material close enough to almost feel a drip from the melting of yesterdays’ snow (schnee von gestern in English).
Finally, the lively, 80’s, duck-egg- blue color of the brooch reminds me of skiing. On the slopes you see people wearing the brightest colors, ones they would not wear anywhere else. And that big white ‘S’ just says it all.

This work comes from the Online- collection on Jantje Fleischuts’ website. More from the ‘Schnee von gestern’- series can be seen there. She also has a section called Gallery-collections, where she displays work from her current solo exhibition: ‘Lost in translation and back to moon’ at gallery Rob Koudijs in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Untill the 16th of January so hurry!
And also found on Klimt02, of course.