Eva Eisler at the Czech Center 9/13/2012

 

Eva Eisler, currently a chairman of the K.O.V. Studio (Concept Object Meaning) at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Czech Republic, will present through a lecture at the Czech Center New York a selection of her own work as well as her student’s work from 2008-2011, ranging from unconventional jewelry, table-top objects, wooden containers and sculptural structures balancing on the verge of being functional, between art and design, perfection and imperfection, drawing the viewer into the intimate space / architecture of our mind.
Eva Eisler (1983-2006 lived and worked in New York), enjoys an international reputation as a multi-disciplinary artist and designer and is considered one of the world’s foremost creative personalities in the fields of art jewelry, furniture, interior accessories, is involved in the fields of interior and exhibition design, and with curatorial and pedagogic activities. Since 1987 she has taught at prominent colleges such as New York University, Parsons School of Design and Rhode Island School of Design. Her works are included in permanent collections of a number of international museums and galleries such as the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Art and Design, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Washington DC, Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague and others.
Trained as an architectural designer in Prague, Eva blends her foundation in Czech modernism with a cutting edge sensibility firmly rooted in contemporary ideology. Her dramatic pieces combine structural precision with lyric grace. This is particularly true of the stainless steel jewelry that brilliantly defies the constraints of form and scale often imposed by its very wearability, to become necklaces, bracelets, brooches and rings, which possess the same formal properties as sculpture, yet enhance the human body. Inversely, the sculptures, some of which are redolent of brooches in the mobiüs strip series, can be regarded as“monumental” jewels, suggesting that scale is unimportant in the assessment of Eva’s aesthetic.
For Eisler, her work is an outlet for ideas about the order and logic of the universe, a way of shaping ideas that are too large to grasp. By constructing an architecture that can be held, instead of holding us within it, Eva Eisler may be giving us an opportunity to see the shapes that invisibly shape our lives.

K.O.V. (Concept Object Meaning) – Class of Eva Eisler at The Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague

The aim of the K.O.V. studio is to not only train students to become goldsmiths or designers, but rather to open their minds towards a wider spectrum of further applications within the environment we live in and to deepen their understanding of the importance of even the smallest details or fragments of a complex structure and their use within the context of the whole. The goal of the studio is to unleash the students‘ fantasy, creativity and instill in them a playful, innovative and imaginative approach. Students are led to express their ideas clearly, with a sense of poetry and appropriateness to a given purpose.
Eva Eisler strives to lead students towards a deeper understanding of the wide spectrum of art in space through an interdisciplinary approach to material, concept and form, in a close relationship to design, architecture and contemporary art. During the course of their studies students cultivate their intellectual skills, dexterity and artistic feeling through experiments with different materials, paying particular attention to metals, and express their creative potential in visionary concepts. Function, technical qualities and originality applied in artistic craftsmanship are phenomena influencing our perception of the world around us. Our goal is to educate the future partners and competitively capable leading personalities from the different spheres of industrial design and craft on a world level and bring the education process closer to real practice, which is the basic component of modern methodology a educational procedures in specialized subjects.
Since 2007 the K.O.V. studio under the leadership of Eva Eisler has for three years running received the “Designblok Editors Award” from the chief editors of international specialized journals in the category Best School Presentation, in 2007 the Dean’s Award for best school studio. Students of the K.O.V. studio gain highest awards in international design competitions and participate in worldwide exhibitions such as the notable exhibition the TREASURE HUNT – Class of Eva Eisler at Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum Munich in 2011.

For more info visit: http://new-york.czechcentres.cz/program/event-details/recent-works/

Eisler and her students are participating in LOOT: MAD About Jewelry at the Museum of Arts and Design, on view now and through September 15th.

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