6 articles Eva Eisler and her design work

The jewelry of Eva Eisler is routed in Modernity. Modernity is the tradition of change, and therefore the tradition of negating Modernity. What is truly characteristic of this extraordinary work is a unique form of creation in time, which summons the complete fulfillment of things.

Eva Eisler has the ability to mobilize powerful energies which could have hardly been activated beforehand, and which show phases of concentration and condensation and phases of saturation and proliferation.

Modernity is the ability to open up to the future through a symbolic emptying and the adaptation of mechanical metaphors.

The purity of form in this work reflects its own destiny, to express it and take possession of it as a moment, which is expressive of the whole of the process. The jewelry of Eva Eisler, the sheer simplicity and reduction, the seemingly simple beauty of the layering of squares and circles and the geometrically ordered rectangles, the purity of the point, line and plane relationships, seeded in the materials of Modernity, is absolutely committed to this moment.

It is impossible to be simple from the outset. Simplicity is attainable only through laborious reduction of a haphazard complexity.

Geometry is a path to form reduction, provided it is re-invented toward specific plastic ends. It is not, by nature static, except as a conceptual prototype. In it's plastic realization geometry changes according to the viewer's angle and perspective. It also is subject to reinterpretation. Basic geometric forms may be subdivided, split, broken up and superimposed upon one another. As geometry translates into sculpture, it inevitably exceeds its embryonic flatness to reach toward dimensionality. Circles swell into spheres, squares become cubes and triangles are rendered as cones. The conceptually two-dimensional converts into plasticity and inter-dimensional tension adds itself to the grammar of creation.

Big and small are of course relative. But big can be insubstantial while small may be possessed of monumentality. How such denial of measurements comes about, is one of the secrets of the artist. We know that it is not the result of technical trickery but rather an inevitable projection, rooted within the artist's authority. Jewelry has, among others, decorative functions and must be adjusted to its ornamental purpose. Architecture must be big enough to contain life. But jewelry, when conceived as art, not merely as craft, can project itself as small-scale architecture.

Surfaces and textures do not automatically harmonize with other form elements. They are supportive or diminishing, they become constituents of a constructed entity. Metal can lose its shine when placed upon black surface and can appear black itself. But it can also be black. Inherent qualities and appearances are engaged in shifting games.

We speak of language as we contemplate abstract forms to endow them with meaning. But not one reflecting narrative, episodic or even verbal meaning. Forms in an artist's hands convey something of the world's substructure upon which ephemeral life flits like a shadow. Such forms are worth holding on to.

This and more is contained in the earnest art of Eva Eisler who has wrested and tamed her restrained perception from an abundant temperamental wealth.

.......In her small work Eva Eisler proved to be master of constructive logic. Her work addresses questions of scale - of its effect on the work's concept. The intellectual purity and pristine execution is typical of Eisler; the increased size underscores these qualities. The use of pure geometry' a cornerstone of Eisler's work, is softened by her sensitivity to materials and proportions.

.......Eisler's commitment to geometry and strict form is tied to her concern for the effect on technology and our muddled relationship to our environment. Relying on the truth that people find comfort in order, Eisler attempts to lay bare the logic, and conceptual order of our world through the order and purity in her work. Its intellectual and structural purity provides a sense of well being and security that comes from any well-ordered composition.

.......Freed from a dependence on traditional jewelry’s reliance on opulence and historical references, Eisler selected her materials for the formal strength - slate, silver, and stainless steel - often working out her ideas in a series of variations. The integrity, poetry and deceptive simplicity of Eisler jewelry brings to mind the beauty of a well-engineered bridge, but her designs are best appreciated when worn. ”I am trying to make connection between jewelry, fashion, architecture, furniture and other designs,” and this contemporary attitude epitomizes emerging attitudes about crossovers between the worlds of art, craft and design.

Eva Eisler – Xantypa

I met Eva Eisler in 1985, at the Fifth Avenue apartment of Mrs. Barbara Rockefeller (Nelson Rockefeller’s daughter-in-law), with whom I was then involved in a jewelry project. I remember being struck by Eisler’s remarkable simplicity and clarity-of manner, speech and dress–but mostly by her jewelry. The last, however, was deceptive. As Thomas Messer, Director Emeritus of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York has since stated, in regard to Eisler’s work: ”It is impossible to be simple from the outset. Simplicity is attainable only through laborious reduction of haphazard complexity.”

Eisler had been in the United States just two years, but by 1990 she had firmly established herself as a leader in the American jewelry community, receiving many accolades that culminated in a solo exhibition at Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1992. Moreover, her jewelry has since been acquired for several important public collections, including Brooklyn Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum and American Craft Museum in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec, Canada. She has participated in many group exhibitions internationally, and in 2000 her jewelry was on view for six month in the British Airways VIP Lounge (designed by Terence Conran) at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

Stylistically, Eisler’s work is the epitome of modernity-”committed to the moment,” says architect Richard Meier-and this formal purity was certainly honed in large part by her early training in the Czech Republic. Exposure to the Functionalist architecture of those such as Jaromir Krejcar and Mies van der Rohe sharpened her geometric sensibility. And the result was jewelry made from perfectly proportioned squares, rectangles and circles, elegantly intersecting one another in space. Granting that such ”Constructivist” jewelry had been made in both Europe and America since the late 1920s, Eisler went further, by using geometry in the service of spirituality. In fact, it is precisely this ”sacred geometry”, embodied within the jewelry format, that Eisler contributed to the lexicon of American jewelry design.

Eisler is not only a jeweler but also a philosopher, believing, as Galileo that ”Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe.” She has elevated jewelry beyond the world of physical reality to a heavenly realm. By her choice of shapes rooted in mathematical order, she forces the viewer to contemplate divine perfection. Viennese collector, Dr. Karl Bollman, goes so far as to apply the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant to Eisler’s jewelry, specifically her ”Unity” necklace. In direct reference to it, he queries, ”Could it be possible that beauty is a mediating link connecting the origin of mathematical order with the final end of creation…?” Eisler, herself, also an intellectual, perpetually meditates upon the relationship of symbol to substance, and, through a process of constant mental evaluation, chooses the most economical means to transmute the cosmic energy of numbers into a dynamic material format.

She is, in a sense, a ”designer’s jeweler.” Noted architects Richard Meier and Zaha Hadid own her jewelry, as does the famed team of Massimo and Leila Vignelli. Eisler refers to her output as ”jewelry for women who hate to wear jewelry.” I think, though, that what she perceives about her admirers is not so much their dislike of jewelry, per se, but disdain for jewelry as accessory. Those of us who appreciate Eisler’s jewelry don’t use it only as adornment; we are loath to trivialize its impact by wearing it merely as an ornament. Far more then solely completing an outfit, an Eva Eisler piece ministers to one’s very being. It speaks to her devotees on the profoundest level. To those who are receptive, wearing an Eisler is akin to sporting a religious talisman.

As an acolyte, myself, I can attest to the jewelry’s metaphysical power. It gives one a sense of inner peace, through it’s ability to negotiate humankind’s temporal nature with a mightier force. It is cathartic. It fosters a feeling of tranquility. It does everything a great piece of jewelry should do. It looks good; it feels good; and it makes one think. Eisler’s oeuvre, in its totality, recalls a statement by the venerable Hungarian Constructivist artist and educator, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: ”My belief is that mathematically harmonious shapes, executed precisely are filled with emotional quality, and they represent the perfect balance between feeling and intellect. ”This is the essence of jewelry by Eva Eisler. To wear an Eisler jewel is a complete experience, one which nurtures the body, the heart and the mind.