Niels Tingaud

There's something strange about Niels's pieces. A contemporary jeweler, he draws as much from ex-votos, gris-gris, and amulets as from creepypastas and horror video games. Between mystical folklore and digital cultures, he explores an ambiguous territory. His drawings, spontaneous and instinctive, are like apparitions, ghosts. A work of translation is being done towards the jewelry; he moves from a flat surface to portable objects in volume.

The strange and unusual materials give them a singular, almost repulsive, visual dimension. Like gargoyles perched on a cathedral, his pieces are apotropaic: they protect, repel evil spirits, but they also seem to seek to attract, to communicate something. They seem stuck in the paradox described by Georg Simmel: adornment serves as an extension of oneself and one's personality, while creating a distance from those one prefers to keep at a distance.

Niels's pieces inhabit this in-between: they are amulets that simultaneously attract and repel their surroundings. Yet this is not the only in-between they exist in. They are jewels that live on the body, and therefore in the social space, but they also belong to an intimate universe, one that struggles to open up to others.

Niels creates pieces that offer a form of protection to those who wish to wear them, while anchoring themselves in a larger, almost autonomous universe that goes beyond the individual.