Karl Fritsch

New ways of seeing

Jeweller Karl Fritsch challenges conventional ideas about beauty and value. Diverse materials take on new meanings and promote new ways of seeing. Nails and screws, for instance, become the decoration on a ring that also symbolises the building of Fritsch's studio.

Fritsch uses traditional and innovative techniques, working in a highly intuitive way: ‘One moment, a ring wants to look a certain way, and the next, it wants to look like something quite different. Sometimes it even freaks out, is unruly, out of control.’

This internationally recognised jeweller trained in Germany. He has had an ongoing relationship with New Zealand since first visiting here in 1994, and he immigrated in 2009. His work also appears in the installation Gesamtkunsthandwerk, part of which is shown in this exhibition.

This text was prepared for the Collecting Contemporary exhibition, February 2012.