Exhibition
PARCOURS BIJOUX
Exhibition
PARCOURS BIJOUX
On the occasion of Parcours Bijoux, Galerie Negropontes brings together the creations of Éric de Dormael and Agnès Baillon, Walid Akkad, Jean-Christophe Malaval and Elena Syraka.
Through highly distinct artistic languages, the artists presented share a common attention to movement, transformation and the living world. The blossoming flower, the leaf, dew, the curve of a body or a line, as well as the face, eye and hand, become starting points for jewellery that transcends its ornamental function to assert itself as true sculpture to be worn.
The collaborative work of Éric de Dormael and Agnès Baillon opens the exhibition into an oneiric realm, where metal structures surround and extend modelled figures: faces, eyes and hands unfold among geometric frames, curves, volutes and branches. In the more organic forms, references to Art Nouveau emerge through femininity, arabesques and the preciousness of gold leaf. The miniature portraits thus become contemporary cameos, reinterpreted within compositions that are free and resolutely contemporary. This imaginary world also enters into dialogue with the Renaissance. The Collier cheveux dorés, composed of three faces, evokes the Three Graces and, more broadly, the world of Botticelli, through the delicacy of the features, the golden hair and the balance of the composition. This classical lineage is counterbalanced by a more Surrealist vein: the eye becomes a brooch or pendant, in a play of metamorphoses that may recall Dalí or Magritte.
In Walid Akkad’s work, nature is less represented than it is embedded within the very construction of the jewellery. Born from drawing, each volume captures a movement and unfolds like an architecture that is both light and powerful. Some pieces seem to catch a flower at the precise moment of its opening: gold bends, curls and unfurls like petals in the making. This relationship with the vegetal world runs throughout his visual vocabulary, conceived as a garden in which lines, volumes, colours, metal and stones all partake in the same impulse. His mastery of sculpture, polishing and the different nuances of gold gives the dense material an almost living suppleness.
This idea of growth and transformation finds an echo in the work of Jean-Christophe Malaval. With Tummelisa, a sculpted silver and gold ring, a unique piece created in 2025, the form is structured around a vegetal vocabulary evoking a flower laden with dew. The convex surfaces, recesses and flashes of metal create the impression of a material in the process of taking shape, somewhere between petal and drop of water. This reflection takes on another dimension with Infini. Its form turns back upon itself, blurring any perception of a beginning or an end. Here, infinity is not a symbol added to the jewellery: it emerges directly from its construction. The line continues, reverses itself, and returns towards itself. The gesture thus connects with one of nature’s fundamental rhythms: that of cycles, renewal and metamorphosis.
In Elena Syraka’s work too, references to the vegetal world notably emerge through the leaf. One ring takes up this form with an economy of means reminiscent of Matisse’s cut-out vocabulary: nature is less represented than reduced to an essential silhouette, rhythm and line. At once immediately recognisable and almost abstract, the leaf becomes a sign.
From one artist to another, the vegetal world is therefore not simply a decorative repertoire. It becomes a way of thinking about form: something that grows, opens, unfolds and transforms. Through their creations, jewellery becomes, in turn, an organism, a talisman, a portrait or a fragment of a dream. It is worn, but also contemplated as an autonomous work of art, capable of transforming our perception of the body as much as that of the object.
