Awarded
David Bielander
Verschiedene Schmuckarbeiten
Products and objects
Awarded
Verschiedene Schmuckarbeiten
Products and objects
Decorative Things
David Bielander's creations are inspired by the everyday world, by things that have stayed with him or that come from the collective consciousness of our society. Once the object is placed on a person, it reveals its potential as a personal jewellery item.
This kind of ambiguity is an integral part of all his designs. In 2002, after training as a goldsmith in Basel, he completed his master's degree at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich under Otto Künzli. The influence of his teacher can readily be recognised - a rounded, many-faceted education expressed in a sure knowledge of materials and in skilled craftsmanship. His creations are distinct, to a certain degree, from traditional decorative art. They retain their function as ornaments, but the downright banal character of these everyday shapes is startling. A silver slug to be worn as a brooch? A bracelet shaped like a tyre? A necklace of wooden weisswurst?
The last of these objects is a good example of the way David Bielander works. The sausage elements are based on the armrests of Thonet's No. 14 Chair - not because the artist's intention is to create an homage to a classic design or because he happens to like the chair, but because the armrests possess precisely the correct shape and curvature. Bielander adds that the sausages were in fact always present in the chair, and that what he has done is to ‘liberate' them!
For the ‘Mistkäfer' (dung beetle) he again makes use of an existing shape: a steel teaspoon. In this case, nothing was cut away; instead, the whole spoon was transformed into a perfect dung beetle, complete with legs, wings and a proboscis, by cutting into and bending its metal. This is a process that we associate with magic tricks - but David Bielander performs it to perfection.
Where David Bielander is involved, nothing is as it seems. The artist free-associates objects, forms, colours and everyday scenes. He simultaneously maintains abstraction and sufficient simplicity, leaving us free to make our own interpretation. His decorative items, however, are always made to be worn, and to be becoming to the wearer.
David Bielander
Born in
1968
Education
Jewellery Designer