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Florence Lehmann

"généa-logique"

  GALERIE V & V
 24.02. - 08.04.2006

Vernissage: am Donnerstag, dem 20. April 2006, um 18:00 Uhr


" Das Weiss wirkt auf unsere Seele wie absolute Stille. Diese Stille ist nicht tot, sie ist angefüllt mit lebendigen Möglichkeiten. Sie ist ein Nichts voll von jugendlicher Freude oder besser gesagt ein Nichts vor der Geburt, vor allem Anbeginn."

Wassili Kandinsky

Seit einigen Jahren entwickelt Florence Lehmann eine Arbeit rund um das Thema Geburt. Es ist eine Auseinandersetzung über die Analogie der plastischen Entstehung von Formen und der Entstehung von Menschen (création et procréation).

“ With the genealogical series of rings, she is pursuing her research on the meaning of the transmission and the mould as a matrix. The imprint is thought of as a complete technique and system for procreation. When the transmission of characters is truly close, successful, like a cloning. These notions of a journey, chain, matrix and their analogies to the body have rarely achieved such a subtle reminiscence in jewellery."

Michèle Heuzé-Joanno


The flesh of words,
A common thread in contemporary French jewellery

by Michèle Heuzé-Joanno, exhibition commissioner

Fl. Lehmann ‘bejewels’ her life, dresses her jewellery. Once, as a young girl, head in the clouds, she transformed part of the sky into a brooch, a cut between two roofs. She shared this dream energy, this softness of the blue sky against the blues of the soul, that of metal as a mirror reflecting life. Then, she fell in love, and her work, with humour, puns, constantly narrated this link. From her happiness was born a little girl, Rosa-Lou. The thought process was once again moved; with maturity, the analysis is more subtle, blending maternity with the questioning of the creative process. Her artistic quests are those of all women, all mothers. Her jewellery touches because each one can find in them his or her own story. They are complicit jewellery, without a sophisticated image. Her assets do not change, she knows the communicative strength of colour, words and symbols.

Her colour is white, her penchant red. White is neutral and red acts as a contrast, with words giving the spirit. In this way, a large bracelet takes on consistency with its title: The empty is full (Le vide est un plein). The interior, the empty, is red, cut out in the form of a heart. Profiles of faces serve to describe human relationships, uncertainties. Tu me fais tourner la tête, a ring to turn people’s heads. The waltz, another to be balanced where two profiles face one other in a sceptical dilemma. On a bracelet, the profiles are linked by a red thread: the secret is in the look. The title sometime serves as a riddle or as a link between two elements: Today is a ring where the finger is placed between the inscription “tomorrow” and an old Egyptian medallion, for “yesterday”. The wearer becomes active, you oscillate Between, wisdom and passion, two earrings. The body is active, gestures participating in unveiling the sometimes hidden message. In this way, a ring where “yes” is written on one side and on the other “no”, reflecting the difficulty of speech or the desire of the day…Pushing the involvement of the body and the designer’s taste for words, one earring can only be read when reflected in a mirror.

From the first to all appearances

Why do we wear jewellery? To go out into the world as for the first time, to make us suitable to appear. From the link between this first appearance and the wearing of jewellery to appear, Florence Lehmann studies the mysteries of this.

Think of a ring, a bracelet, a necklace. To put it on, to make it exist, you put it on: and so it is born. Think of yourself, your arrival in this world, this first arrival, this first outing: and so you are born. The journey stops when the child's head appears, stopped at the nose. Fl. Lehmann freezes time to take advantage of the moment and better understand the jewellery and its significance. The necklace, externally, round like an egg, carries within the silhouette of the wearer. Through necklaces of large pearls that can barely be put on, she translates the sensation of this. Certain pearls remind us of stylised bones, others round and particularly voluminous, like a belly, bear on a flat side the Mysteries of life: cellular divisions from the first three days in fresh and joyous colours. On others, the face is covered by the face of a child, masked by gold leaf, which fades with time. The mystery remains, you can never know everything about somebody, it is through contacts that the veil is lifted.

The internal drawing of the face is taken up again on a gold thread or silver chain, with the faces passing by one another, from one birth to another, between ancestors and children, the jewellery is a chain, a human chain, a genealogical chain. In this way, Fl. Lehmann goes back to our roots. On the bracelet, Noah, the descendants of the latter are enumerated. Its formal complexity takes up the symbolism again: the calligraphic link, in white latex, holds two shells, the mould for objects to come. Since 1998, Fl. Lehmann has been reflecting on the analogy between the plastic birth of shapes and that of men, between creation and procreation. Her colour, white, is participative here. “White, on our soul, acts like absolute silence… This silence is not dead, it overflows with possibilities for life…it is a nothing full of juvenile joy or, to put it better, a nothing before any birth, before any beginning”.

With the genealogical series of rings, she is pursuing her research on the meaning of the transmission and the mould as a matrix. The imprint is thought of as a complete technique and system for procreation. When the transmission of characters is truly close, successful, like a cloning, Fl. Lehmann reflects it in noble metal and not white resin. These notions of a journey, chain, matrix and their analogies to the body have rarely achieved such a subtle reminiscence in jewellery.