David Huycke: Risky Business. 25 Years of Silver Objects

Description

The Belgian artist David Huycke is one of the most important silversmiths working today. He first made a name with his sets of dishes, simple design and subtle use of materials and is now best known for his innovative approach to the traditional technique of granulation. He applies small silver beads to surfaces or builds his pieces directly from them. Huycke sets to work like a scientist or an alchemist, casting in moulds seemingly impossible concepts, incurring along the way risks such as breakage or collapse. Eventually those ideas and experiments are selected and elaborated into an object, where they exude a degree of stillness and have a natural implicitness, as if the work could not have been made any other way. The book provides an overview of his work over the past 25 years.

David Huycke's (b. 1967) work is shown in galleries and museums worldwide, such as the Design Museum Gent (BE), Victoria and Albert Museum, London (UK), and Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau (DE). In 2007 he received the Bavarian State Prize for Contemporary Crafts. In 2010 he obtained his PhD in art with The Metamorphic Ornament: Re-Thinking Granulation. Huycke is a Professor at the PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt (BE) and at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at Hasselt University.