Esther Knobel & Vered Kaminski | net.works
A conversation with the artists, moderated by Toni Greenbaum, will take place at 5pm.
Gallery Loupe’s aptly titled exhibition features prominent Israeli jewelers Esther Knobel and Vered Kaminski, both of whom emphasize materiality and process in their respective practices. This dual presentation brings together new and earlier works that illustrate the originality and integrity of each artist’s vision. Whether made from anodized aluminum or enameled copper mesh, stone, or porcelain; realized by assemblage, sewing, or weaving; and showing colored or untreated surfaces, these brooches, necklaces, rings, and objects are vital, energetic, and timely.
Esther Knobel is a highly original thinker, investigator, and maker, strongly motivated by, and attached to, such themes as family and nationality. She is especially sensitive to the power and importance of making, craftsmanship, and artisanal skills. Knobel works with multiple materials in numerous processes, including assemblage, enamels, electroforming, and textile techniques — such as knitting and embroidery with metal wire — as well as the re-purposing of objects. In net.work Knobel treats us to a medley of examples from her recent series’. She proves herself a truly ecumenical artist, offering not only a “Havdalah” set (objects used in a ceremony marking the end of the Jewish Sabbath) from the exhibition, To Go, shown at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and “Chocolate” (brown-hued brooches created from candy molds used by the Orthodox Jewish community), but a “Kit for an Oriental Tale,” consisting of rings made for the exhibition, Jewelry Making, at the Museum of Islamic Art, also in Jerusalem. Her latest series consists of pendants and brooches of copper mesh, enameled with brightly colored images of insects, flowers, and faces, the pendants hanging from necklaces of strung glass beads, the brooches framed by similar beads in circular formations.
Knobel holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and MFA from the Royal College of Art, London. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Israel Ministry Prize in Art and Design and Andy (Andrea M. Bronfman) Prize for Contemporary Craft, Israel, and Françoise van den Bosch Prize from The Netherlands. She has been included in many international exhibitions, most recently Schmuck 2019 and 2023. Her work can be seen in museum collections worldwide, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Die Neue Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec, Canada; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
Vered Kaminski delights in detail and often follows a mathematical approach to the process of jewelry-making. She employs the meditative aspects of repetition to create intricately patterned structures that feature meandering wire lines and/or the myriad forms found in nature, utilizing diverse materials. The pieces often have architectural associations, such as fencing, or ornamental connections, for example, Islamic tracery. Kaminski has used a variety of customary, as well as atypical, materials throughout her career, often employing those that reference Israel and its political conflicts. For Vered Kaminski: Artificial Stones, a 2015 solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (selections from which were shown in Sand in a Bottle at Gallery Loupe the following year), she combined cement, sand, pigment, and glue for bracelets and brooches reminiscent of traditional Middle Eastern “sand paintings.” For a related series, Natural Stones, Kaminski split small pebbles collected from all over Israel, to make pendants that open and close. Building upon her fencelike silver constructions, the newest works present as sizable geometric shapes woven from aluminum wires, which have been anodized with a combination of saturated colors.
Kaminski holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where she is currently a professor, along with graduate studies at the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and an MFA from University of Paris. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Prize of Excellence from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem; The Alix de Rothschild Foundation Prize, Israel; and the Prize in Art and Design from the Israel Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport. She is the 2015 recipient of the Andy (Andrea M. Bronfman) Prize in Contemporary Craft from the state of Israel. Her work is represented in numerous public collections, among them the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Die Neue Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Stedelijk Museum, Shiedam, The Netherlands; Vydalo Okresni Museum, Turnov, Czech Republic; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
-Toni Greenbaum, Brooklyn, New York, September 2023