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Viktoria Münzker Ferus

Published: 25.01.2024
Viktoria Münzker Viktoria Münzker

Bio

Viktoria Münzker is an artist born in Slovakia, living and working in Vienna, Austria. Graduated from AFAD Bratislava and with a Master from the same university, the artist was the first prize of the "Azur" jewellery art contest and it's a regular presence in internacional exhibitions. Her work was also published in diverse publications, such as Contemporary Jewellery Year Book 2012" and "500 New Necklaces". Viktoria Münzker is represented by galleries in Austria and also in Slovakia.

Statement

Symbiotic Connections
Symbiotic relationship symbolizes the interpenetration and infusion of materials and forms. The bond is created by the adaptation and addiction of species. The symbiosis creates new patterns and symbols that grow from the inside to the surface.
The jewellery pieces are made of wood, stones, metal and other materials. In the brooch Landscape and the brooch Growth, wood and stone complement and expand. Landscape jasper and agate geode, set in brass, make the recycled wood complete. Only through them becomes the piece of wood alive.
Archetype Collier connects the raw, simple shape of the recycled wood combined with brass pieces into a circle. The purity of the form is elevated with transparent Crystal. The basic structure stands for archetype and refers to the simplest, original form of a collier. So close to the body, the necklace creates a close dialogue with the human form. But it resists, clings unwilling to the movements, and thus develops a visual and tactile relationship with the wearer.
The importance of the necklace as protection lies in its position on the body between the chest and the head. The use of natural materials shows the devotion and connectivity of man to earth. His construct is a fragment of the world, regardless of the limits of the possible.
Necklaces Avicennia marina is made of mangrove wood. This wood is rich in biodiversity and act as habitats for wildlife. Inside is a habitable environment for Naturally grown azurite ball. It comes to a symbiotic growth in this salt plant.
Mangrove environment is highly dynamic and harsh and mangrove species are variously adapted to cope with these environmental conditions. It is considered as a best form of coastal bioshield since it plays a critical role in reducing the impact of cyclonic storms, hurricanes and tsunami on human lives and properties.



Red Collection
Red always present in my life and work, as the color of my hair, color of my jewelry and temperament. It is a living proof of life in all its facets with magical attributes like sustainability, willpower, courage, power and spirit. It serves physical revitalization and sexuality.


Crystal Odyssey Collection
imagine your boat drifting in the winds
towards the stars
nothing is real
everything is fantasy
kaleidoscope skies with your head in the clouds
there's a place of diamond fields
lonely hearts standing there
where are they coming from

words are a sea of green, gold and blue
follow the man next door
the sun will know
all you need is everyone

across the lane, we live a life of ease
return to the galaxy of souls
where the crystal odyssey was written
and colored with memories


The Orbis regius Collection
In the beginning, all is empty and dark. It looks like a never-ending sphere. The darkness is strong and heavy. Only a small grain from the destroyed world remains. It's floating and collecting positive energy from the space. In the right moment, at the proper place, it explodes at the speed of light. From one moment to another, the universe is full. Blending, full of light, waiting for you. Make a wish. Create the new world of light, gravid in possibilities.

To give birth to something new, something old must die. By focusing on the essentials we reach the blurred lines between natural and artificial. These relationships are the jewel in the composition of freedom and individual expression.

Sometimes we see only what we want to see. Sometimes it's enough. We want to know the truth behind things.Truth is freedom. So we ask, investigate and are curious. We want to find out how things work. We are creating a universe with the least constraint. The need to create is an elementary necessity of us all.



Desiderium ad Universum
Delicate forms and mellow colors tempt our senses and create unique desserts. I love to dive. Into the depth of the oceans, into the colours of nature, into the subconscious. Natural metamorphosis enchants me, like the transformation of tree resin into a healing stone. A precious gold-coloured tear of God seeping from the inside of a natural organism. Encloses everything that’s on its way. Insects and worms haven’t found a way out. And amber has found a way into jewellery.
Inspired by my desire for nature, hidden connections come out in the sun. Wild scenes in the night of the universe – the beauty of discovery. Riding fast on the blue road, ardent movement of a shape. Red shadows follow us, crystalize and grow on a body. An orchestra of galaxies sending signals of colorful tones swinging over the seas, breach the water surface without a splash. A taste explosion, a fabulous naked miracle of surprise, the true colour of orgiastic blossom. Planet of drops, the horizon is a geyser.


Into the Unknown
If the material character dominates in the jewelry, it is caught in the moment of fascination, even if it exposes him to extreme conditions, such as the processing by a human. By focusing on the essentials and not to external conditions, we reach the blurred lines between the natural and artificial. These relationships are the jewel in the compositions of freedom.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down again to her laptop.
The "Flatworms" have brought up an idea that might work well. She has never seen anything like that, this fine, flaky body look like stripped layers of paint that were so colorful that one could hardly believe it ....... They have taken it to her heart.
Far below the horizon, in the darkness of the ocean it lives unobserved by humans. Where the light goes out and ceases to exist, romp creatures of unknown nature. They lure us in mysterious ways, open up their habitat and run off with us into their closed world.
In their habitat „live“ many algae.
Alginate is a material which is derived from algae. Mixed with water, it serves as a jelly-like mass for body forming. As a purely biological material it is safe and environmentally friendly. Process after the water evaporates and the shape shrinks and dries out. It is very easy. This ease has intrigued me. This was the moment where I have processed it and made ​​ jewelry of it. I've often changed, further carved, colored, or coated the imprint. These pieces include cement, pigments or sand. What are these objects? They are mild forms, imprints of shells, skeletons of marine organisms, parts of melted sand grains together, or the unknown nature which we cannot see. This jewellery shows how I see the real, or even the unreal. There are not really found shells, or coral skeletons, there are only three-dimensional pictures of it. And what is then what could be known only seems more real than visible things. The game played by real and not real, takes place in jewelry and the wearer's body.



The Scent of Jewellery
I always think about the connection between aroma and jewellery. How much smells influence our life and our sympathies to others - for a long time the connection is proved between pheromones and partner choice, in addition, how to smell our brain and our emotions strongly influence.
Wearing perfume like jewellery. I’ve impregnated wooden pieces (from silver fir) with oil mixture of ethereal oils and bee-wax to make a new dimension and an experience which has his origin in Pomander (or musk apple). The relation between jewellery and perfume is very narrow.
In the middle Ages the ladies and lords of the Provence carried small pendants filled with musk or amber which was called “Pomander “. Magic forces were ascribed to this pendant and one said that it protected its bearer. The pomander was worn or carried in a vase, also known by the same name, as a protection against infection in times of pestilence or merely as a useful article to mollify bad smells.


Ceremonies, Amulets, Perfumes
To reassert tribal needs and memories
You can see the jewel
But if you close your eyes
You can “only” smell it
Smells like sweet Moschus
Like memories.
Emotion is a memory of scent
Scent is a memory of emotion

The deconstructive jewelry
Silver and gold. Glass and gems. Construction and emotion. Deconstruction and structure. In and between. Forms twist their way out from the inside. They lift off the skin of the jewelry piece, exposing the structure, they create a second skin around the new volume. The structure breaks down, the surface fills up with forms that are then put under tension by being twisted to each other and to the piece. Between inside and out, original and addition, structure and facade. Pure form is interrogated in a way that reveals its twisted and splintered structure. This apparent chaos actually constructs the body of the jewelry pieces. The internal disorder produces the bar even while splitting it. It is actually constructed out of fragments of that world. The surface is a side effect of the dialogue between internal contorted geometry and external geometry.

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Jewellery is for me an object, which communicates on non-verbal level. Jewellery emits signals. The signals which originate from thought, ideas and concepts. These pulsate in the space and communicate. My main idea is to show jewellery as an object which becomes its power by wearing on human body.
I find my inspiration often in the nature. Nature has perfected her forms about milliards of years; to imitate their creations is for me natural.
I’m interested in deals with interaction between living and non-living elements and systems.

The transformation is about the symbiosis of these two systems.
The transformation of animals in art; pre-historical animals, totem animals or insects. These nature creations transform our human being. Our inner life and soul.

I was inspired by natural stones and biological forms. I have transformed the form of living animals in jewellery pieces, by using natural stones (fluorite, topaz, aragonite, lapis lazuli, aquamarine, garnet…..), amber, pearl, silver and copper.

Many people believe that abundance will come by working with certain things like candles, crystals and essences. For me is jewellery making abundance enough. Abundance is like a never-ending sea of inspiration. There are corals in the sea and golden amber pieces. I combine these in pairs and they perform a jewellery piece.

Intimacy is for me a theme, which is in jewellery still current.
Intimacy is both the ability and the choice to be close, loving and vulnerable. Intimacy requires identity development. You have to know yourself and your inner self in order to share your self with another. Knowing yourself makes it possible to stand for yourself in an intimate relationship without taking over the other or losing yourself to the other. Intimacy is present in jewelry, secret and scent. The scent of everyone is very personal and intimate. That is why I choose a pomander as an inspiration source for “Intimate Jewelry”, I’ve also made scented necklaces at my dissertation work “Paradiso/Inferno”.

Suggestions for the creation of Paradiso/Inferno were my emotional forces, experiences and internal pictures. The other side of scented Paradiso is Inferno, a place where demons of fear live. To defeat these demons signified to bring them to the surface. I have pulled down my fears symbolically from my face. Very much-repeated external cleaning of my face by a cosmetic peel-off mask (which releases the skin from impurities) has projected itself after about 60 repetitions in my inside. It was a trip through the purgatory. At the end, an amount from wafer-thin, clear skins with my facial impression remained. In these skins (masks) my fears are caught, and I can defeat them only if they become jewellery. The fear thereby loses its strength and cannot injure me anymore. I have sewn the wounds, but the scars have remained. Here I have also enclosed a few precious stones (amethyst, garnet and aquamarine) which stand for my deepest inside.

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Events      View / hide events

2024:
Exhibition  01 Feb 2024 - 14 Mar 2024  Innerverse by Viktoria Münzker Ferus.
2023:
Exhibition  05 Oct 2023 - 20 Nov 2023  Missing Memories in Madrid.
Exhibition  28 Sep 2023 - 30 Sep 2023  Missing Memories in Barcelona.
Exhibition  26 Sep 2023 - 13 Oct 2023  Devotional Jewellery in Barcelona.
Exhibition  04 May 2023 - 31 May 2023  Love-Peace-Art by Viktoria Münzker Ferus.
Exhibition  27 Apr 2023 - 29 Apr 2023  Missing Memories at the Melting Point 2023.
Exhibition  09 Mar 2023 - 11 Mar 2023  Battle of the Pins in Munich.
Exhibition  08 Mar 2023 - 11 Mar 2023  Missing Memories in Munich 2023.
Exhibition  23 Feb 2023 - 02 Jul 2023  Mit Eigensinn, Schmuck aus Österreich. Künstlerinnen im Fokus.
Exhibition  23 Feb 2023 - 28 Mar 2023  On the Move, Jewels.
2022:
Exhibition  25 Nov 2022 - 16 Feb 2023  Devotional Jewellery.
Exhibition  27 Oct 2022 - 29 May 2023  Bijoux d'Europe at Cagnes sur Mer.
Exhibition  30 Apr 2022 - 29 May 2022  Meanings and Messages. ACJ's 25th anniversary touring exhibition.
Exhibition  03 Apr 2022 - 25 Sep 2022  A Mind of Their Own.
2021:
Exhibition  26 Sep 2021 - 06 Oct 2021  Shape of Nature 2021. Selected artist list announced.
2020:
Exhibition  11 Nov 2020 - 05 Dec 2020  Show Us Your 'Rona.
Fair  10 Nov 2020 - 15 Nov 2020  Athens Jewelry Week 2020.
Exhibition  12 Sep 2020 - 05 Dec 2020  Precious Places.
Exhibition  11 Mar 2020 - 14 Mar 2020  Broken Beauty in Munich.
2019:
Exhibition  14 Dec 2019 - 15 Feb 2020  Broken Beauty.
Exhibition  18 Oct 2019 - 28 Oct 2019  Beijing International Jewelry Art Exhibition 2019.
Exhibition  04 Oct 2019 - 06 Nov 2019  Tales of the Subconscious.
Exhibition  22 Jun 2019 - 07 Sep 2019  Précieux !?.
Exhibition  05 Mar 2019 - 24 Mar 2019  Eligius Jewellery Award nominated finalists 2019.
2018:
Exhibition  04 Oct 2018 - 06 Oct 2018  Selected Artists JOYA Barcelona Art Jewellery Fair 2018.
Meeting  26 Apr 2018 - 29 Apr 2018  Melting Point 2018.
Exhibition  26 Apr 2018 - 28 Apr 2018  Chaos in Valencia.
Exhibition  07 Mar 2018 - 10 Mar 2018  Chaos in Munich.
Exhibition  07 Mar 2018 - 10 Mar 2018  Biophilia by Viktoria Münzker and Nicole Schuster.
2017:
Exhibition  16 Dec 2017 - 24 Feb 2018  Chaos in Lille.
Exhibition  04 Oct 2017 - 07 Oct 2017  Gioielli in Fermento 2017 Master Collection at JOYA 2017.
Exhibition  18 May 2017 - 06 Jun 2017  The After Joya Effect IV.
Exhibition  07 May 2017 - 17 May 2017  Gioielli in Fermento 2017 Master Collection.
Exhibition  15 Feb 2017 - 31 Dec 2017  Impressions 2017. The Permanent.
2016:
Exhibition  10 Dec 2016 - 21 Jan 2016  Lost Paradise.
Exhibition  29 Sep 2016 - 01 Oct 2016  Selected Artists JOYA Barcelona Art Jewellery Fair 2016.
Exhibition  10 Jun 2016 - 23 Jun 2016  Eligius Schmuckpreis 2016.
Exhibition  21 Apr 2016 - 24 Apr 2016  The Legacy Collection at The Melting Point 2016.
2015:
Exhibition  08 Oct 2015 - 10 Oct 2015  The Legacy Award by Alliages at Joya Barcelona.
2014:
Exhibition  13 Dec 2014 - 17 Dec 2014  The Parallel Worlds.
Exhibition  09 Oct 2014 - 30 Oct 2014  Gioielli in Fermento #gallery.
Exhibition  03 Oct 2014 - 15 Nov 2014  Creativity Contest: The Posing Jewel.
Exhibition  05 Aug 2014 - 16 Aug 2014  Gioielli in Fermento at Rivellino Art Gallery.
Exhibition  10 Jul 2014 - 22 Jul 2014  Gioielli in Fermento at Dozza’s Rocca Sforzesca.
Exhibition  23 May 2014 - 26 Jul 2014  Amber in Contemporary Art Jewellery.
Exhibition  04 May 2014 - 22 May 2014  Gioielli In ...Fermento.
Exhibition  12 Mar 2014 - 14 Mar 2014  Vienna 4.
Fair  12 Mar 2014 - 18 Mar 2014  Schmuck 2014.
2013:
Fair  17 Oct 2013 - 19 Oct 2013  JOYA Barcelona Art Jewellery Fair 2013.
Exhibition  03 Apr 2013 - 26 Apr 2013  Viktoria Münzker: Into the Unknown.
Exhibition  07 Mar 2013 - 09 Mar 2013  Made in Vienna.
Fair  06 Mar 2013 - 12 Mar 2013  Schmuck 2013.
Exhibition  31 Jan 2013 - 09 Mar 2013  Viktoria Münzker: Into the Unknown.
2012:
Exhibition  06 Nov 2012 - 06 Nov 2012  Nobel geht die Welt zugrunde....
Fair  11 Oct 2012 - 13 Oct 2012  JOYA Barcelona Art Jewellery Fair 2012.
Award  01 Sep 2012 - 03 Oct 2012  Cominelli Foundation Award 2012.
Exhibition  15 Jun 2012 - 27 Jul 2012  10 Years kunst.wirt.schaft.
Exhibition  15 Mar 2012 - 18 Mar 2012  8together!.
Exhibition  14 Mar 2012 - 16 Mar 2012  Fremde Federn - Borrowed Feathers in Munich.
Fair  14 Mar 2012 - 20 Mar 2012  Schmuck 2012.
Exhibition  27 Jan 2012 - 10 Mar 2012  Fremde Federn - Borrowed Feathers.
2011:
Exhibition  24 Nov 2011 - 13 Jan 2012  fremde federn - borrowed feathers.
Exhibition  08 Nov 2011 - 08 Dec 2011  STOSSIMHIMMEL 15th anniversary exhibition.
Exhibition  01 Apr 2011 - 30 Apr 2011  Viktoria Münzker: Cherry Romance.
2010:
Exhibition  09 Nov 2010 - 09 Nov 2010  русская развеска.
2009:
Exhibition  05 Aug 2009 - 06 Sep 2009  The Enamel Show.
2008:
Award  06 Nov 2008 - 09 Nov 2008  New Traditional Jewellery Winners 2008.
Fair  06 Nov 2008 - 09 Nov 2008  SIERAAD 2008.

Publications      View / hide publications

Book:  Shape of Nature. Sun, HermanChina Humanities Publishing House:  Hong Kong,  2022
Book:  Growth & Evolution International Jewellery Exhibition. Sun, HermanChina Modern Publishing House Limited:  Hong Kong,  2020
Book:  Viktoria Münzker: Microvita, Art Jewellery Collections 2013 - 2018. Münzker Ferus, ViktoriaViktoria Münzker Ferus:  Vienna,  2019
Book:  New Necklaces: 400+ Contemporary Designs. Nicolas EstradaPromopress:  United Kingdom,  2016
Book:  JOYA 2016 Catalogue. Le DepartementLe Departement:  Barcelona,  2016
Book:  Jewellery 1970–2015. Bollmann Collection. Arnoldsche Art Publishers:  Stuttgart,  2015
Book:  Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and photography. 2014
MAD New York
Book:  Gioielli in...fermento 2014. La Vigna delle Arti:  Ziano Piacentino,  2014
Book:  Viktoria Münzker: Into the Unknown. Jewellery. Münzker, ViktoriaViktoria Münzker:  Vienna,  2013
Magazine:  Baltic Jewellery News. Lithuania,  2012
August
Magazine:  2012 Arte y Joya No192. Grupo duplex:  Spain,  2012
Magazine:  Ganz natürlich: Schmückendes aus Holz. Germany,  2012
GZ-Goldschmiede Zeitung, June
Catalogue:  Fremde Federn. Austria,  2011
Kunst.wirt.schaft. Galerie, Graz
Catalogue:  Contemporary Jewellery Art-Innovative Materials. CYPI Press:  United Kingdom,  2011
Catalogue:  Lange Nacht der Schmuckkunst. Austria,  2011
Vienna
Catalogue:  Mediterraneo. Italy,  2011
Museum of natural History of the Mediterranean, Livorno
Catalogue:  En Viro Schmucksymposium. Slovakia,  2010
Catalogue:  Baltic Jewellery. Lithuania,  2009
Exclusive Magazine for the jewellery business in the baltic region, Vilnius
Catalogue:  Schmuck Wander Passport. Slovakia,  2009
Catalogue:  500 Enameled Objects, A Celebration of Color on Metal. Lark Books:  U.S,  2009
Catalogue:  Refined V: Abundance, a biennial exhibition of jewelry and metalwork. U.S,  2008
Nacogdoches, Texas
Catalogue:  Academy of fine arts and design dissertations exhibition. Slovakia,  2007
Bratislava
Catalogue:  International graduate show. Netherlands,  2007
Nijmegen
Catalogue:  International enamel exhibition. Czech republic,  2006
Frýdek-Místek
Book:  Contemporary Jewellery Year Book 2012 / 2013. Grupo Duplex:  Barcelona,