inZILVER

Artist list

Max Gielis, Carolien Cuyvers, Koen Wygaerden, Siegfried de Buck

inZILVER pays a tribute to contemporary silversmithing design from Antwerp. Following a sequence of exhibitions of innovative jewellery design and fashion-installations, attention is now paid to the pure art of silversmithing.

The exhibition coincides with the show ‘Zilver uit Antwerpen’ in the Silver Museum Sterckshof (Antwerp), focusing primarily on historical silversmithing design with some traces to the contemporary silver-scene. In this context, inZILVER offers a more concentrated and additional view on current developments within the art of silversmithing in Antwerp. Furthermore, the exhibition emphasizes the continuance of Antwerp as a prominent centre of silversmithing design. Currently, there are two leading schools for Higher Art Education in Antwerp that offer a course in jewellery design and silversmithing: Sint Lucas Antwerp (Karel de Grote-Hogeschool Antwerp) and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Hogeschool Antwerp). Students at both institutes are asked to challenge limits and possibilities within the fields of jewellery design and silver smithing. The results of a critical, well-considered and revealing application of traditional silver smithing techniques, can be traced in the creations of a generation of young, promising and Antwerp-trained silver smiths.

Carolien Cuyvers and Max Gielis are two young talents with an innovative and characteristic view on silversmithing. Both educated in Antwerp, they are now establishing their own workshop and vision. In a fascinating dialogue with the creations of these two rising talents, appears the work of two famous silver smiths/professors: Siegfried De Buck and Koen Wygaerden. ‘Tradition’ and ‘innovation’ occur as the central ideas in all these creations. inZILVER tries to offer a stimulus for the combination of contemporary design and knowledge of traditional techniques within the field of silversmithing. Moreover, it focuses on diverse and different types of ‘silverware’. The exhibition aims at developing a new understanding of contemporary silversmithing design; showing that it can offer far more variations in form and function than traditional ‘table silver’ alone…

Evelien Bracke