Jewellery by Iris Bodemer and Ute Eitzenhöfer

Artist list

Iris Bodemer, Ute Eitzenhöfer

From 1 June until 14 September 2014 inclusive, CODA Museum will bring together the jewellery of Iris Bodemer (1970) and Ute Eitzenhöfer (1969) in the exhibition Jewellery: Iris Bodemer & Ute Eitzenhöfer. Both Bodemer en Eitzenhöfer approach the materials they use without discriminating between what is valuable and what is worthless. Expression, experiment and exploration play an important role in the work and development of both artists.

Iris Bodemer
Iris Bodemer’s jewellery can be both sensuous and rough. Patterns and reliefs have been playing an important role in her work for some time. She works with a broad gamut of materials, ranging from gold and gemstones to rubber and string, with no hierarchical relation between the materials she uses to achieve her final form. Over the past few years, the choice of material has gained importance. In order to achieve the right combination of shapes, lines and textures, Bodemer explores the essence of the material and the object as it develops. The recurring use of string and wool goes back to a personal story. At one point, she inherited a ring that had belonged to her great-grandmother. It had been her husband’s wedding ring, which she wanted to wear after his death, as was the custom in those days. However, the ring was much too big for her. Because she did not want to have the ring made smaller by a goldsmith, she wound some wool around it, reducing the diameter, so she could wear the ring. Iris Bodemer considers it a family tradition, which she has applied several times over the course of the years. In 2004, for example, she made a series of rings and wound string around the ring and the stone until they looked like ‘traditional’ rings with a stone. It is not just Iris Bodemer’s jewels that are autonomous art objects. Her method is also one of autonomy, of independence or, as jewellery expert Marjan Unger puts it in an article: “Iris Bodemer does not refer to predecessors or contemporaries. She completely follows her own course. But she does not make autonomous works just so they can be exhibited. Her jewels are essentially made for the human body and, as such, come to life when worn.” Iris Bodemer was awarded with the Herbert Hofmann Prize in March 2014.


Ute Eitzenhöfer
At first glance, Ute Eitzenhöfer’s jewellery appears to have been made to wear and to adorn. Although she claims to be indifferent in discussions about wearability and jewellery as an autonomous art form, her jewels certainly do tell a story. They contemplate and criticise modern society and encourage observers to think about the relationship between people and materialistic things, the meaning of everyday objects and how we treat them. The publication Ute Eitzenhöfer – Schmuck-Jewellery from 2013 does not only give an overview of her work: questions like What habits do people actually have? What is valuable? What is meaningful? What would happen if everyone made things that do not perish but exist forever? How do we influence the world? What will be?, printed in black and white, also indicate her point of departure. Moreover, the questions shed light on her combination of materials. In a number of jewels we see precious metals and gemstones combined with bottle caps, tubes or packaging. These materials symbolise superficial beauty, are mass-produced and discarded just as easily. The combination with other materials in Eitzenhöfer’s jewellery gives them a different ‘value’.
Since the time when she worked as a professor in Idar-Oberstein (2005), Eitzenhöfer has been using more and more gems in her jewellery in order to, as she phrases it, represent the inestimable value of nature. Her jewels provoke thoughts on the subjects addressed by their maker. Eitzenhöfer: “It is not just about the value of objects but chiefly about how we treat them.”