Value, Imitation, and Perception in Contemporary Jewellery. Spotlight Artworks by Klimt02

Jewellery, like many objects, functions as a sign. It produces images and conveys narratives. Its value is never stable. It shifts between the material and its image, between the object and its circulation, between what it is and what it claims to be.

And really, it is we who have given gold its value. It crystallises a collective belief. The labour and the conditions disappear, leaving only something that “has value”. Like currency, whose value is now detached from the material itself, or an Olympic medal, largely made of silver yet invested with an intact symbolic power. Because, at times, believing is more effective than knowing.

It is precisely when material loses its self-evidence that certain pieces become particularly active. Not as a form of liberation, but as a shift in value. A piece no longer needs to be made of gold to function as gold. It is enough that it produces its effects: desire, projection, rarity, attention.
In an environment where images function as capital, visibility = attention = influence = opportunities = money. The question is no longer framed solely in terms of material, but of credibility. Imitation does not simply deceive. It reveals. It puts mechanisms of recognition under tension. And often, what matters is not so much authenticity as an object’s ability to activate a system of reading.

Jewellery operates precisely at this point. It condenses heterogeneous regimes of value, both intimate and economic. To transform, to shift, to détour. These are strategies long used in art history, not to deactivate value, but to reconfigure it.
Gold is removed, yet its effects remain.
Value is questioned, yet redeployed elsewhere.
The illusion is exposed, and still it continues to operate.
Perhaps the question is not whether gold is used or not, but why certain things continue to matter. This is the El Dorado effect, where value is produced through promise rather than presence.

Cardboard by David Bielander mimics cardboard using silver and white gold. The object adopts its folds and texture, and what appears ordinary is precious and compels a second look, an obligation of reconsideration.

It is within this gap that the relationship between signifier and signified occurs. The signifier is the perceptible form, what we see immediately. The signified is what that form activates, an idea, a value. And in jewellery, as in images, these two levels never fully coincide. It is in this discrepancy that value is constructed.


In 1936, the artist Meret Oppenheim removed objects from their function, disrupting their immediate reading. We no longer see things, but their use. By suspending this function, Oppenheim reactivates a form of attention. In place of the diamond, however symbolically and economically charged it may be, sits a piece of sugar set in a mount that appears to be gold. The ring defies expectations. Nothing quite corresponds to what we project.

The object becomes unproductive. It guarantees nothing. And yet, this is precisely where something begins to operate. Freed from what it is supposed to be, it draws attention differently. Not for what it is worth, but for what it sets in motion. Worn, used, the sugar is bound to disappear. The ring loses its stone, leaving behind a structure that can receive a new piece of sugar, thanks to an ingenious mechanism. One might then choose not to wear it, to preserve it as something precious. A form of preciousness that introduces a new layer of value.
Meret Oppenheim. Ring: Sugar Ring, 1936. Gilded silver, sugar cube. Photo by: Frans Strous.



This approach can also be found in the well-known body of work of Benedict Haener, where the traditional codes of jewellery, gold, stone and permanence are borrowed and reworked using simulated materials. A signet ring that appears to be carved from a cube of sugar is made of resin mixed with glass fragments. A quiet nod to Meret Oppenheim, perhaps?

Here, sugar is imitated, but does not behave as such. It remains and can be worn. By preserving the form of the jewel while altering its substance, the artist continues this gesture in later works from the same series Kill You Darling, where glass is replaced with diamond dust mixed into resin. The material that carries value is present, yet no longer where it is expected. Value becomes almost uncertain, even fictional.

Benedict Haener. Ring: Sugar Free Ring, 2023. Glass and resin.


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The pieces of Kepa Karmona produce this shift through the use of degraded materials, generating archaic, almost primitive forms. In contrast to industrial logics, he constructs objects that seem to precede contemporary systems of value, while still re-enacting them, as if the image of jewellery persisted independently of its materiality.

With Peach Pit Solitaire, the artist reinterprets the engagement ring. The body of the ring is shaped from a peach pit, hollowed out to fit the finger, into which a precious stone is set in the expected position. The shift is immediate. And with it, the entire bureaucracy of the stone’s value begins to falter. Because what usually underpins its value, its systems of certification, no longer holds. The pit introduces a perishable, unstable material. The stone is still there, but it is no longer enough. It guarantees nothing. As if deactivated by the context in which it is placed, what once carried authority becomes uncertain and reveals that value does not lie solely in the material itself, but in the set of conditions that surround it and render it credible.

Kepa Karmona. Ring: Peach Pit Solitaire, 2007. Peach pit, tourmaline.


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In the series I Have Nothing to Hide or Sabotage Repair Shop, Into Niilo modifies, repairs, and recharges pieces of fine jewellery. Imitation stones carry invisible messages revealed under UV light, while precious stones are resold.
Here, value is dismantled and redistributed. It does not disappear, it circulates differently. Jewellery becomes a space of negotiation between visibility and concealment, between truth and construction, and, in the artist’s own words, a form of protest, where hidden messages resist systems of control and oppression.
And, as at the beginning, it brings us back to a simple question: is it better to know, or to continue believing what we see, and what it promises?


Into Niilo. Genesis 9:6, 2023. Vintage fine jewellery, gems & imitation gems. From Sabotage Repair Shop Series.


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Eva Fernández Martos’s piece Faux Pearl Necklace reconstructs the form of a pearl necklace using transparent, machined acrylic plates. The image is there, immediately recognisable, but the pearls are not, at least not materially, only mentally. The object functions as a support for this projection. What we recognise does not correspond to what is
.
Her work questions familiar forms and archetypes by subtly shifting them. These classical typologies carry layers of value, built over time and sustained through their continued existence. Something remains always recognisable, yet resists. As if the object were asking to be looked at differently this time.


Eva Fernandez Martos. Object: Faux Pearl Necklace, 2022.​ Acrylic, cord, silver, magnet.


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To conclude this brief selection, it would be bold not to include Kim Buck, who dares to question the values commonly associated with jewellery, in order to rewrite them, or even rearrange them. With It’s the Thought that Counts (2001), the artist presents two jewellery cases side by side. One contains diamonds, the other a simple red heart in cibatool. The perfect combination to materialise love, isn’t it? Together, the symbols produce the same effect as a piece of jewellery given as a token of love.

But here, what matters is no longer the object itself, but everything that surrounds and defines it, the intention, the gesture, the context, as if all the values of jewellery could be replayed without the object itself, as if its codes could be activated and its effects produced, without necessarily making a piece of jewellery.

Jewellery, therefore, does not rest solely on its materiality, but on the set of signs that render it legible. Much like in the conceptual proposition One and Three Chairs by Joseph Kosuth, where an object, its image, and its definition coexist without overlapping. It is no longer the thing itself that matters, but the systems of representation that allow it to be understood. It is no longer the thing itself that matters, but the systems of representation that allow it to be understood.

From this point, a set of questions emerges, ones that run through the history of jewellery and continue to shape how value is understood.
What makes jewellery valuable? Is value contained within the object, or produced by what it activates? When does jewellery begin to function as a sign?
And above all, can it ever escape the system that defines it?
Or perhaps the question is not whether it escapes at all, but how it continues to operate within it.


Kim Buck. Object: It's The Thought That Counts, 2001. Cibatool, diamond.


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About the author

Cécile Maes graduated from ENSA Limoges in design, specialising in Contemporary Jewellery. Her interest in jewellery grows from the human relationships games it involves. Social object, jewellery creates narratives and becomes a sign. Investigating classical typologies, her work is a re-interpretation where historical references and everyday exploration connect ideas to speak about jewellery, the reasons why we wear it and the meanings we give to it. Since 2023, she's been Content Editor at Klitm02. 

Mail: cecile@klimt02.net
Instagram: cilce_maes