Pop-Up Gallery Exhibition: Alternative Options

Artist list

Gian Luca Bartellone, Xiaowen Chen, Yichen Dong, Laura Forte, Jingkai Guo, Emilie Le Dez, Wanshu Li, Bruno Micolano, Mingyi, Ziying Qiao, Vivian SQ, Yutong Shen, Shiyao Sun, Molly Wang, Dongyi Wu, Xinan Yu, Queenie Yuan, Jilan Zhang, Shuo Zhang, Siqiu Zhang, Tina Zhao, Yanfang Zheng

Madeleine Albright, USA's former secretary of state, once written in her diplomatic stories Read My Pins: “I’m deep in love with this jewellery piece because its design gives me another possibility to communicate with others”. With the medium of jewellery pieces she wore and collected, the world-influenced diplomat recalled her diplomatic anecdotes in this book and explained the social and political significance of jewellery from a unique perspective. In contemporary time, jewellery conception has crossed its semantic barriers and its development reflects social trends and changes in art and culture. The fact that designers and artists tend to be more sensitive and passionate than sociologists, ends in inspirations to create the basis theoretically and methodically inserting it into the practice of contemporary design. As a language expression of design, art, and culture, the central idea of jewellery is to explore the relationship between humans and objects, humans and the exterior world in different contexts, involving multiple contents at the same time in its millennium historical development. Any progress may start with revolutionary artistic talents or the development of exquisite crafts and innovative materials or the presentation of a certain concept and ideology. 

Besides the role in design and art, jewellery has played an important position in fashion as well. For instance, Italian fashion development since the 1980s has had a huge impact on global fashion and trends. These trends are derived from specific social and cultural changes in lifestyle, habits, and behavior. Jewellery design interprets innovative concepts and expressions thus affecting the international market. However, industrial consumption culture resulted from the so-called "fast fashion" seems to have completely deprived people of aesthetic desires and reflections on personal lifestyles. We live in a low-quality aesthetic environment of a mess. Blind expansion of production and the homogenization tendency of poor quality "fast fashion" products go against sustainable development and may deceive our own judgments of life, aesthetics, and true value. As Coco Chanel once said, "I love fashion because it cannot tolerate a little bit vulgar. Vulgar is the ugliest fashion language". The design practice and participation of artists infuse a form, a thought, and a concept into fashion and jewellery. Meanwhile, the artwork also realizes and unconsciously extends the creator’s thought, giving it new possibilities and a unique presentation. Therefore, we named the new international exhibition as Alternative Options to welcome the public to have a unique point of view on the creation of jewellery.
 
Compared with previous exhibitions, the outstanding artists selected or invited in this season have a clearer difference in genre, experience, or style. Italian artist Bruno Micolano handles the relationship between the gold thread and the black geometric shape of his brooch, maximizing the interpretation of the minimalist expression technique. The same method is used by French artist Emilie Le Dez, with a difference in her exploration of color composition and minimalism. We can learn a strong realism expression from artist Jilan Zhang's artworks. She expressed her feelings about the epidemic of COVID-19 in jewellery language, constructing emotional communications between herself and others. Shiyao Sun and Wanshu Li both have a relatively strong exploration of material value and the internal logic of their artworks is to reflect value, conceptualism, and beauty of waste from the perspective of jewellery. Shuo Zhang and Xiaowen Chen try to describe small changes of personal emotions and self-awareness, and then create jewels based on these recorded spiritual changes. The work becomes the result of their "self-reflection" and observation. Same goes for Dongyi Wu, winner of the Tiffany Fund (2015). Digitization and new technologies have a great impact on contemporary art. Designer Xinan Yu focuses on the innovative application of parametric digital languages into the design thus having artworks with a strong rational color while Tina Zhao's creations involve digital language but more perceptual in theme and content. Avant-garde artist Yichen Dong, who graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art, masters both fashion and jewellery languages, leisurely blending them. The control of materials reflects her distinctive personal characteristics. All of these forms a positive and diversified creation ecosystem.

Whatever artistic languages or approaches may be used, from spiritual to physical explorations, focusing on oneself or others to cross-disciplinary collaboration, these artists continue to explore the contemporaneity of jewellery while unleashing their unique value. Hope the visitors and the artists feel the same aesthetic emotions and enjoy this contemporary jewellery feast.


Opening:
Wednesday, 14 October, 4:30 pm - 5 pm.

Opening Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, 10 am - 6 pm.
Thursday and Saturday, 10 am - 9 pm.


About the Organizers:
 
New Center of Contemporary Jewellery and Fashion Culture (NoCC), College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University.
Led by the national distinguished expert, the New Center of Contemporary Jewellery and Fashion Culture (NoCC) is a premium institute of culture, education, and research. As the only one of its kind in China driven by the concepts of “design +” and “art +” amidst the ever-popular fashion culture, this multifunctional platform, featuring international and domestic cooperation, is dedicated to the practice, research, culture, curation, and management of the subject of jewellery and related fashion, focusing on cultivating “Creative Leadership”.

Established in 2016, NoCC is located in the SPace of Tongji University, consisting of JAlab (Jewellery Lab) and Glass Art Laboratory. In cooperation with other advanced cultural, educational, industry, and research institutes, NoCC has completed a series of important projects. Over 50 international and domestic scholars from more than 20 countries have been invited to lectures, workshops, and forums organized by the Center, while over 600 artists and designers from more than 34 countries have contributed to NoCC’s exhibitions and publications. The major projects it has involved in include the “Hyper-daily-Towards Contemporaneity” International Contemporary Jewellery Symposium (2016), the Sino-Swiss Contemporary Jewellery and Accessory Design Exhibition (2018), the 4th TRIPLE PARADE Biennale for Contemporary Jewellery (2018), the 1st World Symposium for Fashion, Jewellery and Accessories (2018), and exhibition during the NYCxDesign (2019).
 
The College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, has become one of the most precious design colleges in China with an international presence, on a par with other renowned design colleges in the world. Tongji University boasts Design as one of its first-class disciplines and has been qualified as one of the “Double First-Class” Universities in China directly by the Chinese Ministry of Education. 
 
Field of Rumination, FLYING BLIND
“Field of Rumination” is the fruition of the project “FLYING BLIND +” of the company. Through the incubation of multiple cultural clusters, the project is dedicated to studying the fast-developing economy, culture, and technology, forming its re-practices in a “ruminating” way, thus promoting the "on-site" and “on location” features of culture to further conceptualize ideas and translate them into live scenes. “Field of Rumination” attempts to create a new art creation system that is more reasonable, effective, and with cultural significance, while promoting diversified development of contemporary art practices and consumption patterns in appropriate, sustainable, and multi-faceted ways.