Karl Fritsch: Scenes from the Munich Diamond Disaster

Artist list

Karl Fritsch

Some rings are made to perform. Less like static objects, they are better understood as events, or things which happen, rub shoulders with everyday life, and gain meaning through conversation and incident. Karl Fritsch’s rings are such performers.

Here they are presented in an installation created by the artist. Widely known for his brilliantly irreverent handling of precious materials, here his craftsmanship is evident both in the minute detail of the jewellery, and in the curious spatial arrangement of the exhibition and its furniture.

Fritsch is director and editor of the scene, and has carefully orchestrated the setting, the terms of our meeting. He has designed the tiered pedestls inside each vitrine, and positioned timber chocks beneath the legs, mounted each ring in hand-moulded plasticine.

We encounter the rings amidst a scene – of revelry? Distaster? Theatrical performance? – which our entry disrupts. This is not how we expect to see precious jewellery displayed. Spirits are high, and there is a sense of occasion. These rings are exhibitionists.

Each group is placed so that one must walk around the whole case in order to view them all, navigtaing the scene independently, rather than taking direction from the clockwise arrangement of works, or a directive provided by map or narrative.

Fritsch likes to treat his jewellery like plasticine. His pieces remain unfinished until they are worn. He endeavours to expand the idea of what jewellery might be, throw off-kilter conventional ideas about value, wearablity, and what is beautiful.

Flouting most of the rules of goldsmithing—marrying precious with cheap, making new pieces from discarded jewellery, gluing uncut gemstones together, and fusing kitchen appliances with exquisite rings—Fritsch’s work renounces the ordinary.

And like the performers they are, these rings keep on happening. They outfly expectation, reminding us now of traditional jewellery and its history, now of sculpture and stage props, now of other hands and parties and performances. These are gems that refuse to be just beautiful; they jostle with real life and what it means to be precious, to be worn and to be loved. They create a scene, and revel in it.

Abby Cunnane
Hirschfeld Gallery Curator