Please join us for an artist talk with German goldsmith Peter Bauhuis Friday October 27 at 7pm In the Gallery at Brooklyn Metal Works.
Bauhuis will be speaking about his work in support of his current exhbition Chains and Flowers now on view at Gallery Loupe. Everyone is welcome to join us for this special presentation.
Casting is the method of choice for Bauhuis. The tactile surfaces of his jewelry and vessels are rough and uneven, revealing the ghosts of the molds that gave them life. Bauhuis utilizes silver, gold, copper, and zinc, oftentimes creating alloys, which produce uniquely colored shapes and sketches on the objects’ surface. His works are primal, sensual, and talismanic – inviting touch, fondling. The void is as imperative as the form; brooches and bowls sometimes have holes; the hollow backs of brooches may reveal an inner rhyzomatic web that symbolizes, for Bauhuis, the interconnectedness of ideas, making, and things. – Gallery Loupe
Chains and Flowers
Bauhuis’ playful, ironic take on semantics is evident when he speaks of Chains and Flowers, chained and unchained. Chains can be interpreted to mean fetters or jewelry. When chains and flowers are mentioned in the same breath, the semantic pendulum swings towards fetters for the former, while the latter conjures notions of peace and freedom. The antithetical word pair chained and unchained also suggests moments of bondage and freedom. The title Chains and Flowers, chained and unchained, alludes to a transformational process by which a necklace is born of a plant-like gold structure. To make jewelry of chained oval links, Bauhuis crafted molds whose individual parts resemble orbital trajectories that, taken as a whole, suggest trees and flowers. The unchaining liberates this chain from its existence as a cast orbital plant, transforming it into a necklace. Even so, the chained state is by no means preferable to the unchained condition. As long as the intricate chain forms an orbital sculpture that has the potential of becoming a necklace, it is both a tree and, conceptually, a chain — Heinz Schütz
Chains and Flowers: Peter Bauhuis
Exhibition on view Oct. 21 – Nov. 18
Gallery Loupe
50 Church Street
Montclair, NJ 07042