The fat booty of madness

THE FAT BOOTY OF MADNESS
Jewellery at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich: The Künzli Class 

”We are ‘proud’ to be applied artists in the sense that we see our strength in the specific link between objects and humans, a feature which is quite unique to jewellery” This is how Otto Künzli formulates one of his central theses.

The “Department of jewellery and hollow-ware” at the Academy of Fine Arts and its international network have contributed decisively to Munich’s reputation as one of the leading international centres of jewellery d’auteur. Since 1991 it has been headed by the Swiss goldsmith Professor Otto Künzli (born in Zürich in 1948).
The students in his department come not only from Germany but from all parts of the world: Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, USA … The internationality and diversity emanating from the heterogeneous nature of these cultures and the balance between individuality and sense of community characterise the spirit of this department, one which commands world-wide acclaim.

Emotional, provocative, conceptual, imaginative, daring, profound, crazy, rebellious, garish, stark, highly personal, refined, playful … big fat crazy boonty? Multi-facetted, free from conventions and undogmatic is how the art of the goldsmith is understood at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

The exhibition of Die Neue Sammlung – the State Museum of Applied Arts | Design in the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich – has deliberately chosen to take a contemporary focus to mark the Academy’s 200th anniversary in 2008.
On display are not only the works of current Künzli students but also those of the others who studied under him. All in all, the show presents some 80 artists and 800 exhibits.
The exhibition has been designed by the students themselves and continues the line of their unusual and imaginative shows hold annually at the Academy which have long enjoyed »cult status«.