2019 Catalogue Archive

German artist Nadine Kuffner’s brooch is about challenging hierarchies: of materials, in the use of commonplace tin rather than precious metals, and of the supremacy of the maker, in the particular process that the artist adopts to make the work. With its low melting point, tin can be handled differently to other metals. “There is no hierarchy between me and the material,” says Kuffner, “My hands tell or show the tin a possible way of becoming form, but at the end the material does what it wants and I have to accept the outcome it decides.” A metal die creates the initial form of the brooch; Kuffner controls this first step and then she plays with possible deviations that the material provides. Kuffner studied at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, graduating in 2017. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Europe and the United States.