Oles Tsura in Feel f/risky by HAWK

Body, Play, and Unpredictability. The field of competence Metal Design & Jewellery exhibits at the renowned Galerie MARZEE in Nijmegen, Netherlands

Galerie MARZEE in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is one of the most internationally significant venues for Contemporary Jewellery and Object. For the fourth time, it offers the Metal Design & Jewellery Competence Field of the Faculty of Design at HAWK an international platform. Under the guidance of Prof. Melanie Isverding, students present current works within a continuously evolving exhibition structure conceived as an open, process-oriented system that develops across several project phases.

At the center of this year’s presentation is the installation feel f/risky. The title oscillates between immediate bodily perception and a state of playful restlessness. “feel” refers to the sensory and experiential, while the fragmented second part “frisky” can denote playfulness, vitality, and movement.
The broken spelling creates a moment of irritation that keeps the term open and shifting rather than fixed. This generates a suspended field of meaning between body, play, and unpredictability — a state that can also be read as a reflection of a present increasingly shaped by global uncertainties, political shifts, and accelerating crises, in which stability must be continually renegotiated.

The installation transforms the gallery’s glasshouse into a playful, walkable experiential landscape. The space is conceived as a playground-like setting in which movement, bodily engagement, and spatial interaction play a central role. Elements such as a slide, a carousel, a seesaw, and a circular entrance portal reminiscent of a gymnastic apparatus structure the installation and create different zones of approach, use, and contemplation.

The entire scenography is based on a consistently reused material system of steel tubes and fabric panels that has already been employed in the two previous exhibitions at Galerie MARZEE. In the current installation, the steel tubes have been further developed and formally transformed through deliberately placed radii and curves, resulting in softer, more dynamic structures that emphasize the playful character of the elements. The fabric panels serve not only as spatial surfaces but also as image carriers: through the technique of cyanotype, silhouetted bodies of the participating students appear on the textiles, inscribing traces of movement and presence into the installation.

All architectural and playful elements simultaneously function as supports for jewellery pieces and objects created by the students. These works are not presented in isolation but placed in direct relation to the respective bodily and movement structures. Jewellery thus appears as a situational, body-related, and spatially activated medium that moves between object, interaction, and performative experience.

feel f/risky continues Galerie MARZEE’s sustainable and process-oriented exhibition strategy, in which material cycles are consciously extended and transferred into new conceptual contexts. The result is a hybrid experiential space between play, architecture, and exhibition, dissolving the boundaries between viewing and using, and making contemporary jewellery perceptible as a living component of an integrated spatial system.

Exhibition concept / production: Niklas Dion De Coninck, Lena Dörtzbach, Effi Lieske, Lena Lesselt, Matti Höfert, Lena Kummer, Emma Kramer, Lena Wilhelms, Gerrit Schulze Raestrup, Emma Sattler, Oles Tsura, Anna Wiest, Michl Poensgen

Participants exhibiting works: Cailey Beerendonk, Janna Marie Bombek, Niklas Dion De Coninck, Lena Dörtzbach, Effi Lieske, Lena Lesselt, Matti Höfert, Melanie Isverding, Lena Kummer, Judith Pauline Kortenhaus, Emma Kramer, Lena Wilhelms, Florian Schmid, Paul Schambach, Max Schulz, Gerrit Schulze Raestrup, Emma Sattler, Oles Tsura, Anna Wiest, Svea Hauer, Michl Poensgen, Lenard Requate, Gustav Opitz. 

The exhibition runs until 23rd June.
​Opening Hours: Tuesday–Friday: 10 am – 6 pm Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm