2018 Catalogue Archive

Israeli artist Sachar Cohen has called his necklace Wilted & Chopped, a title that seems to fit awkwardly with these plump and perfect metal elements suspended on a chain. It turns out to be a joke of a kind: Cohen’s forms are based on the symbols of life and death used in video games and manga comics; transforming them into silhouettes, the designs are then stamped out of high-gloss stainless steel by a hydraulic press, which renders them convex, a mirrored surface that distorts everything reflected in it. ‘Wilted’ and ‘chopped’ are suitable words for an animated take on serious topics like life and death, but their unsuitability for the formal qualities of this necklace underscores Cohen’s point that icons we might expect to be crystal clear are ripe for misinterpretation. These signs are open to whatever meanings the viewer and wearer project onto them, and the certainty of communication falters and fractures. Sachar Cohen is currently studying jewelry at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Munich, Germany. In 2017 he was nominated with the Preziosa Young jewelry award in Florence, Italy. His work is included in private collections in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.