Bernhard Schobinger

Recognised as a key figure of avant-garde contemporary jewellery, Bernhard Schobinger’s subversive approach to making spans more than forty years and has earned him a reputation for rebellious innovation. His work skilfully transforms discovered objects into pieces that allude to past and present, precious and leftover.

Bernhard Schobinger (1946, CH) lives and works in Zurich. A graduate of the School of Applied Arts in Zurich, he has worked independently since 1968, gaining international recognition. A recipient of the Francoise van der Bosch award in 1998, his work has been published extensively and is represented in significant public collections, among others V&A Museum - London; Museum of Fine Arts - Boston; Museum of Fine Arts - Houston; LACM - Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art - Philadelphia; Rotasa Collection Trust - California; National Museum of Australia - Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria - Melbourne; Stedelijk Museum - Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum - 's-Hertogenbosch; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen - Rotterdam, Pinakothek der Moderne, Die Neue Sammlung, Dannerstiftung - Munich, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre - Paris, MUDAC - Lausanne; Museum Bellerive - Zurich; Kunsthaus Zug - Zug; Schweizerisches National Museum - Zurich; Koch Collection and makk, Museum of Applied Arts, Köln. His work was included in the V&A's survey show 'Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990'.

PRESS:

Bernhard Schobinger: Rings of Saturn, Crafts Magazine, 2014

Bernhard Schobinger: Anarchy in the UK, Crafts Magazine, 2014

To coincide with the Design Museum's survey show Unexpected Pleasures: The Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery, GALLERY S O London presents Chamber of Wonder.

While the term 'cultural resistance' has become synonymous with the world of social sciences in the 1970s, new energies emerged elsewhere. From the sub, counter and resistance cultures exciting developments in contemporary jewellery blossomed and a fresh identifiable movement among designers and makers of the day was born. The work asked questions about the cultural meanings of gender, material value and the intimate relationship between the object and body. Wearable pieces were made to rethink social rituals and stereotypes and queried the notion of how and why we adorn ourselves.

Following in the spirit of this movement Chamber of Wonder shows the work of current designer makers united by their irreverence of traditional notions of luxury jewellery and a curiosity for reinterpreting objects found and fashioned to wear. From Bernhard Schobinger's choker of hexagon rock crystal slabs linked with fine gold to Hans Stofer's renovated skipping rope necklace with timeworn handles, or David Bielander's silky, silver garlic bulb pendant, the works in the show celebrate the diverse expressions of the genre and offer fresh alternatives to the 'proper' function of jewellery.