AJF Proclaims the Finalists for the 2026 Younger Artist Award, Supported by Karen and Michael Rotenberg
Lynchburg, VA, US—Artwork Jewellery Discussion board (AJF) is happy to announce the 5 finalists for the 2026 Younger Artist Award. They’re, in alphabetical order:
- Corrina Goutos (US/Germany)
- Benedict Haener (Switzerland)
- Steven KP (US)
- Marie-Caroline Locquet (France)
- Zhipeng Wang (China)
The jewellery artists will probably be introduced to the viewers on the principle stage of the Internationale Handwerksmesse on the afternoon of Saturday, March 7, 2026. At the moment, AJF will even reveal the winner.
The finalists will all exhibit their work at PLATINA throughout the annual worldwide Handwerk & Design honest in Munich, held this 12 months March 4–8, 2026. The winner and finalists will probably be interviewed on AJF’s web site over the following few months. We look ahead to sharing extra about these proficient artists with you.
By means of the Younger Artist Award, Artwork Jewellery Discussion board helps new and thrilling work that may encourage future developments within the area. The prize is given each two years to acknowledge promise, innovation, and individuality within the work of rising jewellery artists aged 35 and youthful. The competitors attracted greater than 60 candidates from quite a lot of international locations. The submissions have been judged on originality, depth of idea, continuity of design, and high quality of expertise.
The jury consisted of Bryan Parnham (from the US), Thereza Pedrosa (Italy and Netherlands), and Jimena Ríos (Argentina). Parnham, an artist and jeweler, gained the 2024 AJF Younger Artist Award. Pedrosa is an artwork historian, unbiased curator, creator, and gallery proprietor with in depth worldwide expertise in up to date artwork and jewellery. And Ríos based Taller Eloi, a jewellery college in Buenos Aires. She works as an educator, curator, and editor.
The winner receives an unrestricted money prize of $7,500, and the finalists every obtain $1,000. “We encourage each eligible artist to use,” states AJF Board Chair Marta Costa Reis. ”Even if you’re not one of many finalists, it is a chance to current your work to related individuals within the area. It’s a nice pleasure for AJF to have the ability to provide this award, because of our very beneficiant supporters.” This 12 months marks the fourth cycle in a row that Karen and Michael Rotenberg, whose assortment focuses on the progressive use of other supplies by rising expertise and mid-career artists, have funded the prize. AJF
AJF thanks AJF Board member Sofia Björkman, the proprietor of AJF member gallery PLATINA, for showcasing the work of the winner and finalists in her sales space throughout the honest. “It means rather a lot for younger artists to obtain recognition. Due to this fact, the AJF Younger Artist Award is critical,” states Björkman. “I do know that it additionally means rather a lot to have the chance to point out work to an enormous viewers. In Munich, guests come from everywhere in the world. Right here we make connections and construct networks important for reaching a world viewers. I’m completely happy to current and help the finalists in Platina’s sales space.”
Corrina Goutos (US/Germany)
2013 BFA in jewellery and objects, Savannah School of Artwork and Design
The wearable, holdable collection The BlossomVerse imagines the embedded company of our tech implants, which seemingly in a single day turned extensions of our personal very important senses, profiting in a symbiotic change. Fueled by human vitality as they try a technojailbreak. Simply centimeters from their acquainted terrain in our ears, on our necklines and moist palms, we witness these speculative iOS mutations rising from their cocoons. Tremendous seed pods seem like germinating, whereas ear buds burst into EarBlossoms.
On this collection, I invited entropy into my course of—quieting my very own voice to amplify these of nonhuman brokers. On my bench, damaged porcelain figures and e-waste start to converse: shapes mirror each other, voids entice their excellent counterpart, like AirPods snapping into their case. iOS aesthetic evolves, breaching categorization as craft, design, or artwork. Of their development, I repurposed iOS elements and took inspiration from museum armatures of reconstructed artifacts. —Corrina Goutos
Juror remark
Crisp white digital documentation on this portfolio is pitch excellent for expressing the aesthetic of an imagined semi natural iOS mutation. Involving this formal ingredient of up to date artwork/jewellery documentation insinuates that the mutation shouldn’t be totally imagined, however already amongst us, breeding within the void between flesh and silicone. —Bryan Parnham
Benedict Haener (Switzerland)
2023 BFA in XS jewellery, Lucerne College of Utilized Sciences and Arts
My works captivate with technical sophistication, playfulness, and the irritating familiarity of seemingly acquainted on a regular basis objects. The works are wearable. They’re on the similar time standing image, pro- and anti- statements. Thematically, I defy acquainted conventions with irony and wit. I query values and assemble new qualities utilizing stunning methods and processes. —Benedict Haener
Juror remark
Revolutionary and masterful in its use of supplies and methods, Benedict Haener’s work combines up to date themes with notable depth, introduced with an nearly playful sensibility. Notably compelling is the way in which it engages a number of senses, making a perceptual expertise that extends past the purely visible. —Thereza Pedrosa
Steven KP (US)
2020 MFA in jewellery and metalsmithing, Rhode Island Faculty of Design
My work explores connection, loss, and continuity by way of wooden and metallic—supplies that maintain reminiscence and invite care. Rooted in my household’s expertise of displacement and carpentry, making turns into each inheritance and preservation. I consider every carved kind and knot as a speculative heirloom: a haptic system reconciling what has been severed, proposing new modes of care, of remembering, and of connection. Knowledgeable by queer ecologies and intergenerational care, I take advantage of salvaged hardwoods and jewellery’s relational energy to make bodily the often-overlooked entanglements between physique, historical past, and materials.
By means of carving, carrying, and tending, these items resist punctuation and lean in the direction of a practiced tenderness for survival. My work embraces jewellery as a dwelling web site of re-membering—the place matter, reminiscence, and contact converge towards collective restore. —Steven KP
Juror remark
Exceedingly built-in idea and execution. Craftsmanship, poetics, and presentation are neatly completed up in a bow. These are tender and touching timbers. —Bryan Parnham
Marie-Caroline Locquet (France)
2021 MFA in up to date jewellery, L’École Nationale Supérieure d’Artwork et de Design de Limoges
I grew up within the north of France the place I felt the burden of self-demonstration and the camouflage of social affiliations by way of adornment at an early age. Thus, it’s a conceptual curiosity that led me to jewellery, contemplating it extra as a topic for examine than from an aesthetic affinity.
Every bit of my work redefines the standing of knickknack, contemplating it much less as a showcase object (of wealth, energy, and so on.) and extra as a confrontation with a excessive disruptive potential in public area. It’s not about seduction or illustration, it’s about disturbance.
The supplies, pushed to their excessive limits, naked themselves and reveal their true nature by way of varieties that evoke each want and demise. Whether or not defensive weapons or restraint gadgets, every bit gives a singular carrying expertise that explores our shared fragility. They pose a problem to all who observe them, consistently sustaining the stress between social discomfort and the temptation of embrace. —Marie-Caroline Locquet
Juror remark
The work contributes meaningfully to the sector of up to date jewellery, each materially and formally. The statements are coherent with the items, and the chosen format actively challenges the viewer. I had the chance to see the applicant’s work [and] have continued to comply with their profession over time. I notably worth the professionalism and discretion with which this apply has been developed. —Jimena Ríos
Zhipeng Wang (China)
2024 MFA in jewellery, Academy of Nice Arts Munich
“Stone playing” is a singular cultural phenomenon inside Chinese language jade tradition that has constantly captivated jade fanatics because of its dramatic and unpredictable nature, epitomized by the saying “One lower to poverty, one lower to wealth.”
In my Stone Playing collection, I collected discarded jade fragments from store corners, jade thriller packing containers, and items gifted by pals. By artfully combining flawed, cracked, and tough jade with gold and pearls, I goal to problem and query the requirements of conventional jade appreciation. The work questions the market’s near-obsessive pursuit of high-quality “ice” and “emerald-green” jade, and the value distortions ensuing from this phenomenon. —Zhipeng Wang
Juror remark
Distinctive in each idea and materials use, Zhipeng Wang’s work stands out for its refined minimalism and punctiliously balanced composition. The considerate mixture of jade fragments with treasured supplies is especially compelling, prompting a mirrored image on worth, probability, and notion. The reference to the tradition of “stone playing” introduces an intriguing layer, inviting a reconsideration of how rarity, expectation, and that means are assigned to supplies. —Thereza Pedrosa
Contact: Nathalie Mornu
E mail: nathalie (at) artjewelryforum (dot) org
Concerning the Younger Artist Award
The biennial AJF Younger Artist Award acknowledges new and thrilling work that may direct the longer term growth of artwork jewellery. The worldwide 2024 competitors was open to makers of wearable artwork jewellery aged 35 and underneath who weren’t at the moment enrolled in an expert coaching program. Submitted works will need to have been unsupervised and never submitted for a BFA or MFA present. They will need to have been accomplished inside the earlier two years.
About AJF
Artwork Jewellery Discussion board is a nonprofit group spreading consciousness and rising appreciation of artwork jewellery worldwide since 1997. Its numerous group of artists, collectors, critics, educators, galleries, historians, makers, and writers is united by a ardour for artwork jewellery. AJF advocates for artwork jewellery by way of an formidable agenda of schooling, dialog, and monetary help. It commissions vital writing that units the usual for excellence within the area and publishes artjewelryforum.org, an web useful resource for authentic content material on artwork jewellery.
AJF doesn’t discriminate based mostly on age, ancestry, incapacity, household standing, gender identification or expression, marital standing, navy standing, nationwide origin, race or shade, faith or creed, intercourse or sexual orientation, or for some other purpose.
The opinions said right here don’t essentially specific these of AJF.
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