Gold Rush by Beatrice Brovia & Nicolas Cheng

Artist list

Beatrice Brovia, Nicolas Cheng

For their latest range they have investigated the contradictory history and meaning of gold, a material whose image, origins, discovery and extraction have always been linked with human exploitation, questionable and unsavory stories, circumstances and events. Right up till the present. The gold itself shines forth, something between metaphysical idealization, material temptation and an actual association with complex entanglements, between dream and reality. Almost no other material sparks our imagination in quite the same way as gold. Since time immemorial, gold has fulfilled a multitude of functions, not only as an investment but also in terms of its industrial exploitation, in uses ranging from the insides of a cell phone to the conquest of space.

The two designers are well aware of their responsibilities and their current cycle addresses exactly that ambiguity displayed by the raw material of their craft. After all, they call themselves goldsmiths but are artists who throw up questions, who challenge their discipline and at the end of the day force through a fundamental reform of it. Nevertheless, their work does evidence the material’s fascination as jewelry and does not deny its authors’ desire to find a shape that will do justice to its message. Their objects work with the gleaming element, with the beguiling nature of the surface, with the reflecting aspect and with hidden allusions, with the mysterious consistency and the evocative appearance of their material. Simple lines correspond to a very serious statement, one full of substance. We are not deprived of the pleasure of sharing in the joy that gold brings all the burden that it represents. But what Brovia and Cheng design is a picture, a metaphor, one which goes beyond its exterior, expressing itself as a “meaning gesture”, and, in the context of the history of art, one could possibly talk about a “pathos formula”. However we will find no pathos-laden words or items here; instead, Brovia and Cheng make light of any serious connotations, paring down their shapes to produce strangely modest dimensions and lines. The intention and artistic implications behind these are thus all the more gripping.