Karl Fritsch

Karl Fritsch has chosen the ring as his object of predilection. In his own words, “a ring is made with your hands and worn in our hands” therefore being “so close to how it’s produced” and desperate to tell ” I love you, I am beautiful, I am rich, I am cool, I hate you (…) I am”.

The pictures here show are part of his latest body of work, Rings Without End, currently being exhibited at the Objectspace gallery in New Zealand. His rings face us with an irregular sculptural aesthetic and an eclectic mix of oxidized silver, gold and diverse non precious metals that create the base for precious stones such as rubies, agates or sapphires. Central to these pieces is the stone setting method as the stones are kind of merged with the rough terrain of the setting, denying the usual outstanding place they occupy in the jewellery making traditon. In Fritsch’s work, the stone is hidden by a mysterious sediment allowing us to have only glimpses of it, a bit as if we had just found the gems in a mineral deposit and still attached to the host rock. The basic structure of the rings acts then as an allusion to their geological background, placing back the stone in relation to its origins.

Karl Fritsch, born in Germany, was a former student of the Goldsmith’s College in Pforzheim and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and currently lives in New Zealand.

Untitled 2011 – gold, sapphire, agate, peridot, rubelith

Untitled 2011 – silver, gold, ruby, peridot

Untitled 2011 – silver, gold, copper, bronze, diamonds, rubies

Untitled 2011 – silver, lapis lazuli, rhodochrosit, citrin, beryl

Untitled 2011 – silver, amethyst, diamond, jade, moonstone, ruby, sapphire, garnet

No personal webpage, please check the exhibition/gallery website:

http://www.objectspace.org.nz/programme/show.php?documentCode=3072