Benjamin Lignel: How do you like me now?
Exhibition
/
01 Feb 2013
-
20 Apr 2013
Published: 01.04.2013
NextLevel Galerie
- Mail:
- contact
nextlevelgalerie.com
- Phone:
- +33 1 44 54 90 88
- Management:
- Isabelle Mesnil

NextLevel Galerie is pleased to announce its new collaboration with the artist Benjamin Lignel. Lignel is one of the artists who truly reflects on jewellery, where the concept takes precedence over pure ornamentation of traditional jewellery.
Artist list
Benjamin Lignel, Kiko Gianocca
Just like contemporary art, contemporary jewellery is a field of unlimited experimentation and rich artistic possibilities. Benjamin Lignel is one of the artists who truly reflects on jewellery, where the concept takes precedence over pure ornamentation of traditional jewellery. Practitioner, theorist but also curator Benjamin Lignel invites another artist who works in a complementary reflection of contemporary jewellery: Kiko Gianocca.
How do you like me now? prolongs previous research on the way our perception of the body has changed, as new practices in medicine, body adornment and corporeal aesthetics influence, and sometimes contradict, more traditional views of the body, and the way we interact with it.
I am curious, in particular, about the sometimes paradoxical outcome of body modification: while plastic surgery (and its injected alternatives) presupposes an ideal body type and strives to emulate it, it in fact establishes a completely new aesthetic genre. This effect is never as strong as when it somehow misses the ‘natural effect’ (a contradiction in terms, some would say) and hits upon a super-natural effect: forms that are both excessive and idiosyncratic, common and strange.
Likewise, the self-conscious bodily add-ons presented here are less concerned with beauty than beautification, in all its silly, wishful, and heroic forms: they intend to provide you, the augmented wearer, with a means to shine in society, and connect with your inner royal eagle (batteries not included).
The transformation alluded to by the exhibition’s title also points to the various mediation strategies used by contemporary practitioners - such as me - to disengage jewellery from a value system traditionally indexed on weight, skill or - God forbid - beauty. Like the body modifications mentioned above, these easily recognizable artistic protocoles (installation, photography; the book, the caption) meant to give this ‘old craft’ a face lift threaten to trans- form it beyond recognition.
This, and the ensuing damage done to my reputation as an honest jeweller, is the subject of this show.
B.L
Guest: Kiko Gianocca
Kiko Gianocca’s recent series of work - “With other eyes”, “to Hold”, “Who am I”- hope to tease out our emotional investment with objects that offer minuscule emotional pur- chase - anonymous pictures, truncated se- cond-hand tools, diminutive short-hand faces.
The objects’ tenuous link to you paradoxically works in their favour: unclaimed and suspended in temporal drift, but clearly meant to be held and adopted, they are objects in waiting. This is all the more effective as it is insidious: as I pause before the brooch / pendant / ring, moments away from taking hold of it, my body has already accepted what my mind refuses to acknowledge: I have just reclaimed these incomplete stories for my own.
Gianocca’s work illustrates the elasticity of what we choose to document identity. Something other than real evidence presides over (self-) representation: a decision, maybe, but certainly not a DNA test. Which brings to mind Robert Rauschenberg’s iconoclastic telegram, sent in 1961 to his gallerist, which read: “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so”.
How do you like me now? prolongs previous research on the way our perception of the body has changed, as new practices in medicine, body adornment and corporeal aesthetics influence, and sometimes contradict, more traditional views of the body, and the way we interact with it.
I am curious, in particular, about the sometimes paradoxical outcome of body modification: while plastic surgery (and its injected alternatives) presupposes an ideal body type and strives to emulate it, it in fact establishes a completely new aesthetic genre. This effect is never as strong as when it somehow misses the ‘natural effect’ (a contradiction in terms, some would say) and hits upon a super-natural effect: forms that are both excessive and idiosyncratic, common and strange.
Likewise, the self-conscious bodily add-ons presented here are less concerned with beauty than beautification, in all its silly, wishful, and heroic forms: they intend to provide you, the augmented wearer, with a means to shine in society, and connect with your inner royal eagle (batteries not included).
The transformation alluded to by the exhibition’s title also points to the various mediation strategies used by contemporary practitioners - such as me - to disengage jewellery from a value system traditionally indexed on weight, skill or - God forbid - beauty. Like the body modifications mentioned above, these easily recognizable artistic protocoles (installation, photography; the book, the caption) meant to give this ‘old craft’ a face lift threaten to trans- form it beyond recognition.
This, and the ensuing damage done to my reputation as an honest jeweller, is the subject of this show.
B.L
Guest: Kiko Gianocca
Kiko Gianocca’s recent series of work - “With other eyes”, “to Hold”, “Who am I”- hope to tease out our emotional investment with objects that offer minuscule emotional pur- chase - anonymous pictures, truncated se- cond-hand tools, diminutive short-hand faces.
The objects’ tenuous link to you paradoxically works in their favour: unclaimed and suspended in temporal drift, but clearly meant to be held and adopted, they are objects in waiting. This is all the more effective as it is insidious: as I pause before the brooch / pendant / ring, moments away from taking hold of it, my body has already accepted what my mind refuses to acknowledge: I have just reclaimed these incomplete stories for my own.
Gianocca’s work illustrates the elasticity of what we choose to document identity. Something other than real evidence presides over (self-) representation: a decision, maybe, but certainly not a DNA test. Which brings to mind Robert Rauschenberg’s iconoclastic telegram, sent in 1961 to his gallerist, which read: “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so”.
Installation: Priape, 2013
Tin, copper, silver, gold, steel, made-up mannequin.
Edition of 3
photo: F.Kleinefenn Courtesy Next Level Galerie.
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Photograph: Getting old sucks (Isabelle), 2006
Lambda print laminated on aluminum, framed
Edition of 5
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Print: Généalogie, 2013
Laser printing on offset paper
Edition of 25
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: Supplément (gonades 5), Supplément (couillades 1), 2012
Tin, copper, silver, gold, air, steel
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Piece: Lingam, the tall and thick version, Yoni, 2010 & 2013
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Piece: Yoni, 2013
Gold, cultured pearls, gold-plated steel
Edition of 3
photo: F.Kleinefenn Courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: Reflecteurs, 2012-2013
Tin, copper, silver, gold, steel, gold-embossed fake leather box
photo: Baptiste Lignel
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: Reflecteurs, 2012-2013
Tin, copper, silver, gold, steel, gold-embossed fake leather box
Detail
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: Queue, 2012
Tin, copper, silver, gold, steel, squirrel hair
Edition of 12
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Ring: Who am I?, 2010-2012
Silver, white gold, yellow gold, polyurethane
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Necklace: Turning Into, 2012
aluminum, gold, silver
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: With Other Eyes, 2012
Anonymous pictures, silver, polyurethane resin
Front
photo: Kiko Gianocca
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Brooch: With Other Eyes, 2012
Anonymous pictures, silver, polyurethane resin
Back
photo: Kiko Gianocca
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Pendant: To Hold, 2012
Burnt wood, resin
photo: L. Gustave courtesy Next Level Galerie
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
NextLevel Galerie
- Mail:
- contact
nextlevelgalerie.com
- Phone:
- +33 1 44 54 90 88
- Management:
- Isabelle Mesnil
-
Con-tacto. Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión. Degree Show 2020
24May2021 - 21Jun2021
Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión
Mexico City, Mexico -
Simply Brilliant. Artist Jewelers of the 1960s and 1970s
27Mar2021 - 27Jun2021
Pforzheim Jewellery Museum
Pforzheim, Germany -
Keramiek Triënnale 2021
07Mar2021 - 30May2021
CODA Museum
Apeldoorn, Netherlands -
Masterpieces in Miniature. Treasures from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection
05Mar2021 - 15Aug2021
DIVA. Antwerp Home of Diamonds
Antwerp, Belgium -
Poetic Ceramics by Judith Bloedjes
28Feb2021 - 20Jun2021
CODA Museum
Apeldoorn, Netherlands -
Invisible Thread
01Feb2021 - 27Feb2021
Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein
Munich, Germany -
Preziosa Young 2020 in Barcelona
13Jan2021 - 03Feb2021
Hannah Gallery
Barcelona, Spain -
Like Silk
12Jan2021 - 12Feb2021
EASD València
Valencia, Spain -
HomeWork by Melanie Bilenker
08Jan2021 - 11Feb2021
Sienna Patti
Lenox, United States -
An Octopus's Garden of Silly Delights by Ulvi Haagensen x Morfosis by Ihan Toomik and Andreas Kivisild
06Jan2021 - 27Feb2021
A-Gallery
Tallinn, Estonia -
Fables for the Times. Presentation of Artist in Residence Program Revive in Ten
25Dec2020 - 05Jan2021
MEI-BO Art Museum
Shanghai, China -
Schmuckmelange. Die KunstModeDesign Herbststrasse. Degree Show 2020
21Dec2020 - 31Dec2020
Die KunstModeDesign Herbststrasse. Evening College JewelleryDesign
Vienna, Austria -
The Palace of Shattered Vessels: Light Catchers
19Dec2020 - 31Mar2021
FROOTS & Nogart
Shanghai, China -
See the Big from the Small
19Dec2020 - 03Jan2021
The Closer Gallery
Beijing, China -
Absolutely Abstract
17Dec2020 - 09Jan2021
Lee Eugean Gallery
Seoul, South Korea