The Robert Mazlo Endowment Fund for Art and Contemporary Jewellery presents MIRABILIA, hosted by LA Joaillerie par Mazlo in Paris, from September 10 to October 26, 2019. This collective and transdisciplinary exhibition brings together a dozen international contemporary jewelers and Magali Lambert, a French photographer and visual artist.

The title of this exhibition evokes the phenomenon of the encyclopedic collection that appeared during the Renaissance with the studioli and in the Baroque period with the cabinets of curiosities. A paradoxical place, both dedicated to study and presentation to the public, the cabinet of curiosities is the precursor of the modern museum. It materializes a certain vision of the universe and of knowledge through the gathering of "wonders" or admirable things. Specimens, rare and precious objects created by Nature (mineral, vegetal, animal) as well as by the genius of man are accumulated, while cultivating a taste for the strange and the fabulous which will cause these first collections to be gradually overshadowed by the scientific advances of the Enlightenment.
However, this exhibition does not confine to a literal evocation of beauties and rarities from nature. On the contrary, it aims to question the contemporary notion of wonder, by emphasizing the feeling of strangeness and attraction-repulsion generated by works considered as hybrid.
Whether formal - an association of techniques, materials, disparate disciplines - or metaphorical, hybridization is indeed a process of mutation of forms and practices that recurs in the field of contemporary artistic creation, and which works selected for this exhibition are unanimously echoing.



Moreover the notion of hybridization seems to open the way to a new perspective in regard to the specific place occupied by jewellery on the art scene. At the crossroads of craft, design, and art, contemporary jewellery expresses itself through the diversity of know-how, materials and techniques, as well as through concepts and media (video, installation, performance, body art), thus escaping any attempt of definition and categorization. Acknowledging the singularity of this discipline through its irreducible hybridity could allow its emancipation from obsolete patterns that no longer correspond to either the reality or the deep aspirations of its practitioners. The performative dimension of jewellery, a preliminary object par excellence, placed at the margin, exposed on the body, offers, as Caroline Broadhead puts it "the circumstances and territory to explore issues that arise at this junction of the personal, social and cultural "which is also reminiscent of the dialogue between interiority and demonstration that characterizes the very principle of the cabinet of curiosities.

Exhibition
September 10 > October 26, 2019.
Opening reception September 10th, 4-7 pm.
Book signing by Magali Lambert Venus du jamais mort starting at 6 pm.
Tuesday-Friday 2 - 7 pm.
Saturday 11 am - 1 pm and 2-7 pm.

GUEST ARTISTS


MELANIE BILENKER

Born in New York in 1978, Melanie Bilenker is an American artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who translates the historic art of Victorian memorial hair jewelry into work that reflects upon the contemporary era. Instead of implementing the ...

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GEORG DOBLER

Born in 1952 in Creussen near Bayreuth, Germany, Georg Dobler is one of the most prominent figures of international contemporary art jewellery. A professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Hildesheim...

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SAM THO DUONG

Born in Bien Hoa in 1969 in Vietnam, Sam Tho Duong fled his country with all his family while he was only teenager. They found refuge in Germany and finally settled in Pforzheim, a town known as  the epicenter of German...

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NICOLA HEIDEMANN

Born in Munich in 1965, Nicola Heidemann is a self-taught artist. Drawing, painting, photography and drawing are some of her favorite mediums alongside her practice of art jewellery. She opened her first studio shortly...

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MARIKO KUSUMOTO

Born in Kumamoto, Japan, Mariko Kusumoto grew up in a Buddhist temple on Kyushu Island. In 1989, she obtained a BFA in painting and engraving from Musashino Art College in Tokyo, and in 1995, a MFA from the...

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JULIA MARIA KÜNNAP

Julia Maria Künnap graduated in 2004 from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Jewellery Art Department under Prof Kadri Mälk. Before this she studied at Konstfack, Stockholm and in 2006 was the Artist in Residence at....

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MARIE MASSON

Born in 1987, Marie Masson is a French artist, a creator of "corporal objects". Combining the techniques of leatherwork, jewellery and plumasserie, her works revisit the codes of ornementation and are at the edge... 

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MÄRTA MATTSSON

Born in 1982 in Stockholm, Sweden, Märta Mattsson first studied jewellery at the Gothenburg School of Design and Crafts. She then improved her technical skills while studying in London, at the Royal College of Art, then...

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ALEJANDRA SOLAR

Born in 1975 in Mexico City, Alejandra Solar currently lives and works in Luxembourg. After a degree in graphic design, she decided to pursue her university studies and to learn the art of jewellery successively...

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GISBERT STACH

Born in 1963 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, Gisbert Stach lives and works between Graefelfing and Munich. After graduating as goldsmith from the Staatliche Berufsfachschule für Glas and Schmuck, Kaufbeuren...

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FELIEKE VAN DER LEEST

Born in Emmen, the Netherlands in 1968, Felieke van der Leest lives and works in Øystese, Norway since 2008. After completing her initial jewellery training at the Schoonhoven Technical School, she graduated...

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MAGALI LAMBERT


Magali Lambert is a French artist, born in 1982, based in Paris. She graduated from École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris in 2006. Magali Lambert sees in photography an opportunity to hod what tends to disappear by staging vestiges and relics. 

She collects and ritualizes abandoned materials saved from dumpster or oblivion. Her rites consist of collisions, images and words: «the worn forms become objects expanding history(ies). Riddles. All are fragile, all carry in them the preciosity and the precariousness of living».

«As a baudelairian ragman-poet, Magali Lambert scrutinizes remains of our civilization. She chases objects, vestiges and skeletons, marries them in a beautiful shape, photographs them as newlyweds, then pins the picture in a box of those made for butterflies or remarkable insects.» (Michel Poivert, Preface of Histoires naturelles, 2013)

Named member resident of the Casa de Velasquez, French academy in Madrid for year 2012-2013, her works are frequently exhibited worldwide and notably at Lianzhou photography festival (China), Montrouge contemporary art fair (France), or in art capitals such as New-York, Madrid, Paris, Marseille, Porto, and Brussels.

h'artpon publishing house released her first monography Venus du jamais mort in autumn 2018, including a text co-written by the artist and Michel Poivert, as well as a text by Emmanuelle Lambert.

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