Beppe Kessler: Paintings & jewellery

Artist list

Beppe Kessler

The particular training of the Dutch artist Beppe Kessler in the sector of visual arts, as well as in weaving and, later, in experimental jewellery, reveals a language which is identified totally with these different disciplines. Proof of this is to be seen in her works of the ten-year period 1990-2000, when her canvases, already supports to paintings, became the same main material she used to create jewellery. In her brooches – among her favorites – the surfaces, on which often monochrome paint is spread or distinguished by swirling evolutions of signs, undergo alterations: the jutting parts are sometimes distributed in abstract spectra, sometimes torn or ripped by holes, from which colored magma erupts, at others, they are tiny groups of minerals, pebbles or gemstones. Her attention focuses on the spatial pressure which surges from within the canvas and changes it into a visual whole, existing between the depths of the paint and the movements of the surface, from which unexpected forms proliferate, freed from the coercion of an obscure force.
In her works of the last ten years, Kessler has been experimenting with precious materials, using gold and gem stones - mainly transparent ones such as alabaster, rock crystal and agate, but also acrylic fibre. This new phase of her work is dominated by a different application of weaving techniques. Now she uses gold thread to penetrate translucent materials, creating arabesques inside them, or defining lines linking very different and contrasting elements in elaborate, complex necklaces. Her painting, rich in colors, supports and interacts with irregularities in the surfaces, treated with holes, cracks and cavities, through which golden threads lead in and out, weaving abstract tangles. It is an apparently joyful vision, mainly visible in its entirety, although the concept of constriction is not totally abandoned: in the brooch “Vale of tears”, the artist uses tiny, brightly colored spheres of Swarovski crystal, restrained by tight threads and massed together in a confused, chaotic way in boxes of quartz or Plexiglas, oppressed by their involuntary confinement.

Graziella Folchini Grassetto