Twenty jewellery designers from Europe have been invited to participate in the exhibition, the majority of whom have never worked with amber before. They are: Slawomir Fijałkowski, Christiane Förster, Karl Fritsch, Sophie Hanagarth, Herman Hermsen, Daniel Kruger, Stefano Marchetti, Pavel Opočensky, Annelies Planteijdt, Ramon Puig Cuyàs, Wolfgang Rahs, Ulrich Reithofer, Philip Sajet, Adolfas Šaulys, Gisbert Stach, Wilhelm Tasso Mattar, Manuel Vilhena, Arek Wolski My name is Petra Zimmermann. The initiators – Wim Vandekerckhove from the Villa de Bondt Gallery in Ghent and Professor Sławomir Fijałkowski from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk – were primarily keen for the artists to look at amber with an ‘untarnished’ eye, to be inspired by it.
The inspiration for them came from legends associated with amber and their own associations with the stone. „We hoped that no one would reveal better than artists what is not always a conscious reference point for answering the simplest, yet most difficult questions: about the essence of the concept of value – and not in its economic sense at all. This was achieved brilliantly, and as a co-creator of the project, I have personal satisfaction that the exhibition could become a pretext for discovering the avant-garde nature of the „gold of the North” and contribute to the creation of a unique collection of contemporary amber art objects,” says Sławomir Fijałkowski.
Exhibition „Petrified Tears”
Villa de Bondt, Ghent (Belgium): 19.01.2012 – 02.03.2013
The Amber Museum, Gdańsk: 21.03 – 21.04.2013
Legnica Silver Festival, Legnica: 30.04 – 07.06.2013
More about the exhibition
Sławomir Fijałkowski: Petrified Smile
Artistic sensitivity expressed in amber
Creators “untainted” by amber - a conversation with Wim Vandekerckhove