2018 Catalogue Archive

Swiss artist David Bielander plays with the familiarity of everyday objects, subverting expectations through skill and material. In this case, it is a double con. A corrugated cardboard band is stapled together to form a bracelet, like a child might make in kindergarten, challenging conventions about preciousness and permanence. Only this bracelet is in fact carefully fabricated from patinated silver to look like corrugated cardboard, and the staples are 18 karat white gold. The illusion is expert, and only the facts of the matter tell the truth: weight, sound and temperature. As Bielander writes, ‘I aim to walk that fine line between making something simple enough that one unavoidably recognizes it, that simultaneously requires a fair conscious effort to get beyond the obvious, and at the same time to be abstract enough that it allows a shift to happen, that the piece becomes something altogether new when it unpredictably connects with you.’ David Bielander studied jewelry at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Munich, Germany, graduating in 2002. He received the Herbert Hoffmann Prize in 2010, the Francoise van den Bosch Award and the Swiss Federal Design Prize in 2012, and the Swiss Grand Prix Award in 2017. His work is represented in private and public collections in the United States, Europe and Australia, including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art.