'The exhibition ‘Kumpane’ is dedicated to Alexander Blank (*1975), the 10th Hanau City Goldsmith. After training at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie Hanau, Alexander Blank studied as a master student in Otto Künzli's class for jewelry and utensils at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich. After graduating in 2011, he set up his own business in the Bavarian capital.
While the Staatliche Zeichenakademie focused on intensive exploration of a wide variety of craft techniques, the academy in Munich enabled him to work freely and conceptually. Alexander Blank quickly found his own signature style and focused on narrative, on developing stories. His works take us into fantasy worlds and the unknown, inspired by comics and science fiction. Alexander Blank also repeatedly takes up themes from pop culture and everyday life, processing what he has seen or experienced. The artist makes use of materials from our everyday environment, allowing his jewelry to become a part of it.
Quote from Malte Guttek, director of the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau:
‘It is a great pleasure to show the humorous Alexander Blank. He takes up cartoons like Tom and Jerry in his works. He plays with the pleasure of dressing up when he modifies American police badges. On the one hand, it's a look back to childhood, but on the other, it's also a side swipe at the world we live in.’
While animal heads and comic figures have become his trademark over the years, Alexander Blank is also showing recent works in the exhibition. They are characterized by a high material aesthetic, in which shapes and colours become abstract images for the body, representing a visual mirror of the artist's world.
Alexander Blank himself says of his jewelry:
‘My interest in this art form goes beyond the classic representation of status and wealth or other expressions of human vanity. Jewellery has much more to offer than the confirmation of stereotypical role models!’