Style
09 December 2020
Alina Alamorean, tormented jewelry
They’re esthetic but not necessarily decorative. Tormented. Alina Alamorean’s contemporary pieces are not always beautiful at first glance. You have to know how to tame them…
By Sandrine Merle.
Alina Alamorean is represented by the Ibu gallery located in the gardens of the Palais-Royal, one of the most prestigious in Paris. Her jewels appear in beautiful collections such as that of Solange Thierry-de Saint Rapt, and her numerous clients include a few crowned heads. And yet the road has been long and difficult. Born in Transylvania, Romania, during one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century, she dreamed of France, which seemed like a land of unbridled possibility. A country of freedom where she arrived in 1990, but all alone… When reality hit home, she abandoned her architectural dreams, got married and became a dental assistant. Until 2004, that is, when she began to study at the School of Jewelry on rue du Louvre.
Elegant grunge
With her crumpled bronze cotton jacket, her faded black jeans, this beautiful woman could be Michèle Lamy’s little sister, or Rick Owens’ muse. We feel an energy on the surface of her skin, a fragility mixed with an inflexible will, which earned her a place as one of the characters in the video game devised by Balenciaga to present its collection “Afterworld – The Age of Tomorrow”. She is eager to tell the story of her work on a number of levels: the journey, the punch in the stomach, the inadmissible fantasies, and so on. “It’s like being laid bare in front of your lover,” she says. All the suffering and torments of a life exposed.
Dialogue with the body
Part of her work, composed of hypertrophied pieces in movement and curves, is of a very strong sensuality. Alina Alamorean makes them without a mold: almost naked, she heats the wax on her and shapes it in a single movement. The rings eat the hand, the bracelets eat the forearm… ” I create them in an instant, without thinking, so that this energy and strength can flow out. ” They contain a great deal of emptiness because they have to breathe, they have to escape…“Just as I escaped from my country, my parents, and my husbands.” She loves bronze, heavy and dense, energized by contrasts which are polished/satinized on the edges as on her Dune and Water Lily rings. I also love her sublime earrings made of folded and crumpled aluminum, a material she chooses for its lightness.
Beautifully weird
The other side of Alina’s work is darker, her jewelry sometimes resembling the paraphernalia of S&M … “You don’t fall in love overnight with these aggressive jewels”, explains Solange Thierry-de Saint Rapt, who owns dozens of them. Alina admits “to playing with a certain perversity, and to a predilection for creating ambiguity with metal that looks like leather straps or fabric.” They’re all made of bumpy materials, rough surfaces, deformed pearls. Her inventory encompasses rake teeth, piano keys, calligraphy brushes or mink tails with skulls, symbolizing her “dead lovers”. It even features a burnt-out scooter with its red plastic starter and brake cable. “To stand out in a country where there was nothing available, I always made my jewelry and clothes from recycled materials,” explains Alina Alamorean. Which explains why she succeeds so brilliantly in this difficult endeavor.
Banner images : Olesya Shilkina
*To read Bijoux contemporains, une passion (Éditions du Regard)
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