Ulrike Knab & Annelies Planteijdt

Date: 
Sunday, 9. October 2016 - 0:00 to Sunday, 29. January 2017 - 0:00
links: Ulrike Knab, Foto Olaf Maikopf; rechts: Annelies Planteijdt, Foto: Vermetfotografie

From October 9, 2016 until January 29, 2017, the German Goldsmith’s House in Hanau will be presenting a concentrated selection of jewelry pieces by Ulrike Knab & Annelies Planteijdt. Around 150 works by the two goldsmiths will be shown under the title Ulrike Knab bunte Welten – Annelies Planteijdt schöne Stadt (Ulrike Knab Colorful Worlds – Annelies Planteijdt Beautiful City). Nearly thirty public and private collectors, including the Museum August Kestner, Hannover, the Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg, and the Marzee Collection, Nijmegen, will be represented with their pieces.

Ulrike Knab trained at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie Hanau and then studied at the Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Since then she has been active as a freelance artist and the owner of the Galerie Neuer Schmuck in Hannover. Annelies Planteijdt, as her name suggests, comes from the Netherlands. She got her education at the Vakschool Edelsmeden in Shoonhoven, followed by studies at the renowned Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam. Since receiving her degree, she also has been a freelance artist.

Geometric jewelry made of thin strips, small plates, and delicately threaded stones and pearls characterize Annelies Planteijdt’s work. By contrast, the jewelry by Ulrike Knab is figural, fragmental, and oppositional. As different as the design of their work is, both goldsmiths play with the transformation, staging, and reinvention of their pieces.

For Ulrike Knab, the basic idea for this transformation is usually a found item, something long forgotten or sorted out. In her work, she arranges and revives things which in most cases would no longer be worthy of attention. She tells little stories with her jewelry and creates something new from nothing. These randomly found objects come from the most disparate places. A preference is obvious for broken pieces that she found in the woods, in the urban area, or on one of her world-wide travels. However, antique precious stones, which were long forgotten in bags and boxes in the storerooms of the gem merchants, are refigured to a practically new value image. Pieces from the 1980’s through the present provide an eloquent testimony to her work.

Transformation itself is a basic design feature of the pieces by Annelies Planteijdt. The exhibit will include her series Beautiful City on which she has been working since 2000. Her interest is focused on the discovery of structures and principles which she allows to influence her pieces. She orients herself, for example, on the ground plans of rooms, streets, urban districts, or crystals. This neck jewelry – she only makes necklaces – has a primary and a secondary existence. In its first life, lying flat and orderly, it presents itself as a geometric formation of minimalistic arrangement. Its second life unfolds on the body of its wearer. The distinct structure of the recumbent form disintegrates in favor of freely swinging lines and flowing movements.