Overpowered

Artist list

Claude Schmitz, Valéria Fazékas

(...)The materials used have always been what one can genuinely define as traditional. Classic materials in a context of value and significance, which Claude Schmitz specifically applies to and reflects on in his works. In more recent works apparently playful and lightly naturalistic elements are arranged in a rigorous form, patination and varnish move across the same levels of meaning. Through simple geometries he highlights the adjusted form, although driving them into a new network of relationships, in a condition of self-reflection free from decoration.(...)

Dietmar Tanterl:

Valéria Fazekas – Jewels for the Head
Adèle Eisenstein

(...)Valéria Fazékas’s “unique wearable art objects” possess organic forms that remind of an octopus, anemone, flower, seashell, barnacle or bird’s nest – there is even one named “plankton”.
It all started when she was studying leather design and heard the expression “head-covering”. She knew instantly that this was her love. The many layers of meaning revealed a concept that was “more than a hat, deeper – you decorate yourself, you cover yourself, you conceal yourself.”
She found that working around the head and face meant a form of expression most intimate and individual.

(...)Fazekas’s mode of thinking is that of a designer, “ecological, simple, streamlined.”
She is not interested in trends, and her objects can be worn for years.
She feels compelled to limit herself, so that she can maintain her fingerprints on each piece. “I enjoy exactly the fact that no two pieces here are exactly the same,” she says.
“People think that I make hats, but I don’t make hats – I solve problems.”