Jewellery Presentation: Xavier Monclus and Philip Sajet. Florence Jewellery Week

Artist list

Xavier Monclús, Philip Sajet

Xavier Monclús / Narrative or Essential

If there is anything that has characterized my work over time, it is a clear figurative personality, what we normally call Narrativism.
Animals have been and still are a constant in my work. I have a special attraction to them at a sentimental level. In fables they express sentiments and social situations that are part of human relationships.

I often portray them as hybrid beings who combine compositionally with objects and architectural elements. At the end of the process, they are transformed into beings with their own personality and life.

The representation of attractive elements such as architecture, animals or toys – combining with each other – has configured my personal and formal world, giving my work a surrealist character.

Currently my work is different if viewed over a trajectory of 20 years. The Narrativism that characterized my objects is making space for the search for an essential, simple geometry, tending towards a sort of minimalism, without completely abandoning references to the figurative aspect. The narrative compositions are replaced by forms that evoke the more intrinsic origin of the material. In the case of the works that evoke architecture, I am more interested in explaining what material they are made of than in showing what happens, which I wanted to do in the past.

Geometrical fragments evoke consistencies and colours both of the stones and the wood. The express a totality. A fragment that, from the compositional point of view, is a whole, with an almost abstract character.

The animals have not disappeared, on the contrary, they continue to be there as our messengers of ourselves; but it is true that in some way they are petrified, as if they wanted their memory to be perpetuated.

The Menorquina and Talayot popular architecture is now my sphere. Menorca is where I live and where I want to die – a small, atavistic Mediterranean island.

I love it, I chose it and I represent it.



Philip Sajet / The Battle for Beauty

Morpheus is the god of dreams.
And Morf became a word for form.
What a nice conclusion. A dream becomes Form.
First there is Nothing then there is Something. 
Beauty takes many forms, I do not know them all.
 
What fascinates me about beauty is that it borders so closely to what is perceived as ugly and the exciting contradiction is that if one wants to find new forms of beauty, one must actually tap into the source of ugliness.
 
If the viewer looks longer to the work than creator has done to do create it, the work has won.
Then the Battle for Beauty has taken place.