Ineke Heerkens - Bead Beat Boogie
30 April until 19 July 2023 (extended until 26 July 2023)
Bead Beat Boogie – Ineke Heerkens
Imagine an artist walking the streets of New York – the rhythm of the city and its music, the fast-moving ballet of its citizens, a background of stone and steel towers with glimpses of blue sky. Imagine Piet Mondriaan’s Victory Boogie Woogie, with its self-assured straight lines and the remnants of masking tape, revealing the artist’s considerations and slow creative process.
Inspired by a fascination with Mondriaan’s work, Ineke Heerkens transformed her experience of New York into a collection entitled Bead Beat Boogie during her tenure as artist-in-residence at 92nd Street Y.
Heerkens worked with a dancer to choreograph the rhythm of the city. Swinging movements were pared down to stylised gestures with her hands and directly pushed into clay or cast in aluminium. On first sight, the jewellery pieces may look like shattered fragments, yet they are carefully constructed and assembled, like a chain of surprise encounters.
Heerkens works like an archeologist, carefully dusting off fragments that dance in her mind until they find and fit their matching pieces.
The expert assemblage of fragments demonstrates her skill in making, exploring materials and her fine-tuning of techniques.
Each part carries an emotion. The stoneware is glazed in distinct colours, restricted to a limited number of shades. Some components look like stoneware but are in fact finely stitched and braided textile. They demonstrate the attraction of opposites, i.e. hard and soft, colourful and monochrome, vibrant and dull. Daring result in this collection of strong, sculptural forms and very feminine jewellery.
The wearer will feel movement, a dance, a rhythm that sways with the body in this collection of strong, sculptural formsand feminine jewellery.
Monika Auch
