TALENTE 2016
Award Ceremony, 27.02.2016 16:30
Fairground Messe Munich, Hall B1
Talente 2016 presents the work of 102 artists, designers and craftsmen from 26 countries in 12 different areas of production. This year Talente has also participants from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, South Africa and Argentinia. Talente will show innovative and very different works in glass, ceramics and jewellery as well as a very large selection of textiles. The works are inspired by considerations of material and re-use, the specific haptic and visual qualities of materials and the effect of their combination. The artists experiment with various surfaces and use materials in unusual ways. It is fascinating to observe how surfaces contrast and harmonize how perfection and decay are evoked.
As in the last years, an unusual high number of applications arrived for “Talente” from the field of jewellery. The young artists show a special interest in the techniques and ideas of the collage and the use of unusual materials like basketry, ceramic, plaster, textile and different stones. The works concentrate more on the surfaces themselves less on decorative embellishments. In many instances they emphasise the archaic and rough side. A pattern is also created by the materials themselves.
Steffi Götze Brooches: Untitled, 2015 Silver, copper,enamel Photo by: Karlos Rodriguez Garcia From series: « Inside Outside »
Selected Artists:
Jewelry:
Paul Adie — Tata Akhatova – Irene G. Barrera – Dovile Bernadisiute — Shachar Cohen — Maria Camila Fernández – Katrin Feulner — Veronika Gocová – Steffi Götze – Jonathan Hens — Annie Huang – Sarah Yeonjeong Kim – Maria Kobelová – Eölisa Lutteral – Aiza Mahmood — Thanh-Truc Nguyen – Darja Popolitova – Eva Ruzickova – Nina Sajet – Dana Shapira – Nelly Stein — Janina Stübler – Fanmiano Tang – Edu Tarin – Karen Vanmol – Sanna Wallgren – Kun Zhang
Annie Huang - My « twigs » are going off to Munich for Talente!
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Finalists were chosen from the largest group of Artist Award applicants to date–151 artists representing 35 countries–and judged on originality, depth of concept, continuity of design, and quality of craftsmanship. This year’s jurors were Philip Clarke of New Zealand, inaugural director of Objectspace; 2014 Artist Award winner Seulgi Kwon, from South Korea; and AJF board member and collector Susan Kempin, who is from the United States.
The unrestricted cash prize of $7500, generously funded by Susan Beech and Karen and Michael Rotenberg, will be awarded to one of the five finalists. AJF would like to thank Sofia Björkman and PLATINA for providing a showcase for the winner and finalist during Schmuck and donating the gallery’s profits to AJF. The winner will be announced in February 2016.

MFA, Metal, State University of New York at New Paltz, New York, USA, 2013
« My studio practice relies on a drawing process where forms and ideas develop intuitively through the initial exploration of a line on paper. In these works industrial steel becomes transparent and delicate as cuts made with the jeweler’s saw reflect the quality of a line drawn by hand … I am constantly trying to capture small moments of contrast where control and imperfection collide. »


MA, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Germany, 2012
« My work starts with an intuitive experimental play with found materials, which usually come from my immediate surroundings. In the process of experimenting, the materials are being thoroughly transformed; the original source cannot be identified anymore … My jewelry pieces may appear like artifacts of a past civilization, fossils from another planet, or the ornaments of fabled beings. »


MFA, Metals/Jewelry, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, 2009
« Life in Southern California, with its unreal sunsets, light-bleached buildings, and vestiges of 70s style, brought my memory to a saturation point, forming crystals of experience … These merged into objects with varying physical relationships to the body–at the scale of architecture, at the scale of jewelry, and in between. Utilizing the vocabulary of jewelry and architecture, space and place are explored–from the past to the present, from the personal to the cliché, from the obvious to the mysterious. »


MFA, Metalsmithing, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, 2013
« We seek out and delve into mirrors for clarifying affirmation but, in truth, are met with a foreign body … This perceived closeness of similarity and familiarity is a deception–fictitious shorthand we use in identifying within society and relationships. If the act of definition is a loss of information, is it possible to create a loss-less object? »