Notes about Milan exhibition Artistar 2019

In February during Milan Fashion Week took place Artistar Jewels, an event that gives an international and original perspective on the contemporary jewelry world, showing us the latest trends. This is the sixth year of the exhibition and in my opinion every year it becomes more interesting and curious.

This time Artistar was held in the Palazzo Bovara, an historic neoclassicist building of the second half of the eighteenth century created by the architect Carlo Felice Soave. It was a seat of the French Embassy during the Cisalpine Republic, and there also hosted the young Stendhal.

Like every year during the exhibition there is a special area with the creations from three main characters of the contemporary jewelry and art world. This time they were Turi Simeti, Ute Decker e Christophe Burger.

Italian artist Turi Simeti is a representative of the Spatialism movement, founded by the artist and sculptor Lucio Fontana and intended to consider sound, color, movement and space into an entirely new type of art. He is known for minimalistic monochrome canvases, which explore the properties of light and color.

For the French designer and artist Christophe Burger jewelry is a means of communication, he invites us to interact and interrelate.

Modern German designer Ute Decker creates minimalistic and sculptural jewelry, experimenting with space and dynamic forms.

The three winners this year were the Korean jeweler Sowon Joo, the Russian designer Veronika Kuryanova and the designer from Brazil Bea Tambelli. They received the right to free participation in the exhibition Artistar Jewels 2020.

I can spend hours looking at the work of the Korean jeweler Sowon Joo. She transforms the metal into something airy and light. The contrast between source material and final result fascinates me. It reveals to us the delicate and “gentle” side of hard and cold metal. The master determines her technique as weaving, which reflects the vulnerability and fragility of life itself.

For me, it was an amazing discovery of the work of the jeweler Dori Gabrielli. Confident and geometric lines contrast with the poetic and expressive language of raw stones.

Another artist I would like to mention is the Italian designer Anna Maccieri Rossi. I was truly amazed by elegance and delicacy of her idea and its realization.

This bear is engraved on mother-of-pearl and hand-painted.

Oversized bug-inspired jewels which hold secret treasures by London based jeweler Jessica Pass seemed to me absolutely incredible and fabulous. Every single element catch the eye and enchant with their details.

This year at the Artistar exhibition I saw a lot of Russian designers works. And one of them was off the chart.
The pieces of Denis Sozin were breathtaking.  The ring inspired by the architectural bionic works of Zaha Hadid and futuristic glasses.

I would like to mention two designers working with glass: Augustina Ros and Nayibe Warchausky. Their design is completly different and unique: on the one hand, smooth, flowing lines and on the other hand, architectural and geometric forms.

The Argentina born Barcelona based artist ​​Augustina Ros combines in her work the sensuality of glass and incredible artisan artistry. Her jewelry is made of borosilicate glass, modeled and blown by the technique of flameworking. Some of them are worked with fine metal fuming, carved and polished, which generates a faceted surface an incredible play of light.

The jewelery by architect and designer Nayibe Warchausky with use of Murano crystals and gold also captured my attention. She uses different settings, exact dimensions and compositions using transparency, hues, tones and color. Amazing volumes with sinuous and graceful lines are like miniature sculptures with optical and tridimensional facets.