In search of a spirituality now almost forgotten, with designer and artist Alina Alamorean as his mentor, Gaspard Hex has become in no time a very well known name in a narrow area of jewelry you can’t quite categorize and you should not even try to.
Mihaela Pascu in conversation with Gaspard Hex.
I. You create with a force you don’t see every day, or least this is the impression most of your pieces give to the public. What drives you?
I think jewelry has nothing to do with body ornamentation, but is on the contrary a wonderful way to communicate ideas and your vision of the world. In my work I try to reveal this timeless constant that goes from the pyramids to Mondrian, passing through the cathedrals and primitive art, that you can find in a lot of artistic movements and that speaks about something sacred, a manifestation of transcendence, through natural laws and symbols anchored deep inside ourselves. All these symbols, like the ouroboros, for example, that is standig for the eternal cycle of nature, are sorts of archetypes that you will find in a lot of cultures that had no direct contact with each others. I’m just trying to continue on this way with my own sensitivity.
II. Your music appears to be transgressive, seems that is speaking about things we don’t see or feel in everyday life. How does it influence the creation process of your jewelry?
Such nice words for my music.. I’m touched.
I’m focusing a lot on jewelry at the moment, so I don’t have much time to produce music, but I’m still DJing sometimes. I don’t really see boundaries in what I create, I’m just telling the same things with different artistic medias. When I started making jewelry, I already knew what I wanted to say and which was my universe was so I just had to transpose my views from one field to the other.
III. We are exposed to a huge amount of information; both influencers and influences are everywhere. Do you feel the need to protect the process of creation against this context or you are finding it rather inspiring?
I’m not so sure I get influenced much by other designers. Just my mentor, Alina Alamorean, who showed me that everything was possible in this field and how jewelry could be something really artistic. Then the door was opened. There are things I want to do since a long time now and I’m really happy when they take shape in the real world, no matter if I’m the one that did them or not. I think I get more influenced by contemporary art or by nature than by fashion. Regarding the creative process, I’m not really fond of the people telling their creation secrets, because you loose part of the magic of the work and because then you’ll never experiment and discover your own techniques.
IV. How does the entire process develop for you when it comes about inspiration and creation? What triggers it and what do you feel it could block it?
It depends a lot, I think the most important for me is to be surrounded by things that correspond with my deeper self, then ideas come by themselves naturally. But they can come while doing such different things as dancing in an experimental techno party, reading a book about alchemy or symbols, taking a walk through a museum or a forest.. What could block it? Maybe just getting numbed by all those comfortable things in modern life.
V. There are always certain situations or people who need to put everything into categories even when one cannot be placed into a specific one. Where do you see the jewelry pieces you create into the artistic field nowadays?
Well, I have no idea, and honestly, I don’t really care. Some may say it’s dark, but it’s not really my point of view, some may say it’s shamanic, I may agree more with those. But on the path I’m walking on, I don’t think technical words and classifications are so important. Emotions can rarely be well described with words.
VI. The pieces presented at Galerie BSL have a complexity and beauty that makes us want to understand what was behind the entire series. How would you portray the inspiration and the process of creation for these ones in particular?
For these pieces, I think the general idea was to introduce ancient nature spiritualities such as amazonian shamanism and celtic druidism into our nowadays world. I also wanted to portray my vision of Atlantis, no matter if mythical or historical. I used a lot of rough stones, such as black tourmaline for it’s energy, or opal because of its polychromia that may refer to the feathers used in Amazonia and that have something really magical I couldn’t explain with words. Some of them are also conceived as micro-universes to tell about the relations between microcosm and macrocosm and show that everything from the smallest to the biggest is connected.
photographer Jerome Pannetier
more at www.gaspardhex.com
interview by Mihaela Pascu, designer at Wolf25 | www.wolf25.ro
Outward entities / ADAL