Kumpane by Alexander Blank

Artist list

Alexander Blank

While the Staatliche Zeichenakademie focused on intensive exploration of a wide variety of craft techniques, the academy in Munich enabled him to work freely and conceptually. Alexander Blank quickly found his own signature style and focused on narrative, on developing stories. His works take us into fantasy worlds and the unknown, inspired by comics and science fiction. Alexander Blank also repeatedly takes up themes from pop culture and everyday life, processing what he has seen or experienced. The artist makes use of materials from our everyday environment, allowing his jewelry to become a part of it.

It is a great pleasure to show the humorous Alexander Blank. He takes up cartoons like Tom and Jerry in his works. He plays with the pleasure of dressing up when he modifies American police badges. On the one hand, it's a look back to childhood, but on the other, it's also a side swipe at the world we live in.’
/ Malte Guttek, director of the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau

While animal heads and comic figures have become his trademark over the years, Alexander Blank is also showing recent works in the exhibition. They are characterized by a high material aesthetic, in which shapes and colours become abstract images for the body, representing a visual mirror of the artist's world.
 
Alexander Blank himself says of his jewelry: My interest in this art form goes beyond the classic representation of status and wealth or other expressions of human vanity. Jewellery has much more to offer than the confirmation of stereotypical role models!
 
An artist's booklet with photographs by Alexander Blank and a text by Joshua Groß will be published to accompany the exhibition.
It can be purchased at the Goldschmiedehaus for 12 €.


The Hanau City Goldsmith is appointed every two years. So far, four City Goldsmiths Rudolf Bott (2004), Jiro Kamata (2006), Karl Fritsch (2010) and Sam Tho Duong (2014) as well as five female City Goldsmiths, Hilde De Decker (2008), Vera Siemund (2012), Tabea Reulecke (2017), Silvia Weidenbach (2019) and Isabelle Enders (2021) have been guests in Hanau. The City Goldsmith award is a cooperation between the city of Hanau, the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst e.V. and the Staatliche Zeichenakademie Hanau.