Violeta Adomaityte & Philip Sajet

Artist list

Violeta Adomaitytė, Philip Sajet

Introducing Philip Sajet in a country like France is quite a challenge. France, which considers jewellery as a Decorative Art, when this jewellery designer claims that jewellery, like art, is the need for something which is not a necessity! Thinking and making a piece of jewellery is as vital as breathing for Philip Sajet. An adept of co-exhibiting, whether out of humility or for the pleasure of dialogue, Sajet invites us to discover, alongside his works, the jewellery of Violeta Adomaitytė, a young Lithuanian artist. Following an exhibition (with Tehri Tolvanen) at Ornamentum in the United States, and with Beate Klockmann, at Antonella Villanova in Italy, this new exhibition is the first ever in France for this internationally acclaimed artist. 

If I create, I am someone if I don’t, I am no one. I have no idea how else to explain it. It is the flowing energy of being alive. Violeta Adomaitytė’s words come alive when you look at the jewellery that evokes her vision of nature and everyday life with indulgence and ingenuity... ​

Immersed in Art since childhood, Violeta graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania. There, the study of engraving techniques, involving work on stone and metal ultimately led her to jewellery. For her, jewellery is the ideal medium to bear witness to important moments in history or in the lives of people. Her precise, meticulous work reveals her attraction for matter. She handles a silver plate like drawing paper, appreciates enamel, tries out everything with curiosity. But the concept takes precedence over the material. A jewel is precious through the emotion it unleashes, the energy it displays and the symbol it embodies. The materials are only elements of language signifying: "life is precious". Violeta is still young but already knows that her work will only find its place by retaining its authenticity. She wants her jewellery, crafted by her own hands, to talk, to whisper, to sing...

Born and raised in Amsterdam, Sajet attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and then was selected to do an internship in Padua with master goldsmith Francesco Pavan. Most of his jewellery are a reflection on the history of ornamentation, reinterpreted in a contemporary, personal way. Sajet often uses irony, exaggerating the size of the stones, amplifying the rings, offering finally an aesthetic wonder sustained by technical perfection. Haunted by beauty, his gaze transforms nature into a jewel, any circular shape becoming in his dreams a powerful necklace.  As the historian Marjan Unger writes:  “His jewellery nearly always contains a duality: old-new, sharp-smooth, rough-polished”. On the soft side you may find mother-of-pearl clouds, aquamarine skies, smooth pebbles, on the other, calling up the violence of the elements, stones with sharp points, scarlet shards with sharp edges ...  
 
Philip Sajet masters all materials. Working with gold and silver with niello, he incorporates precious stones, pebbles, horn, mother-of-pearl, glass or whole objects if they serve his project!  He is daring with colour, using stones or enamel. Coloured stones enchant him, but he uses them in an unusual way. He might cut them, saw them, replace them with shattered glass, call them up in volume in metal or by gold lines evoking their edges, a sort of metonymy widely imitated ... Another unique feature of his work are his clasps: they are so ingenious! 
 
Philip Sajet’s works can be found in numerous public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum-Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum-London, Die Pinakothek der Moderne-Munich, The Fine-Arts Museum-Boston and The Musée des Arts Décoratifs-Paris. 


Opening in the street!
Thursday 11 June from 6.30 pm inside and outside, in the presence of the creators.