A pure white avant-garde ceramic jewelry by Raluca Buzura

She comes from the installation field and something very scenographic remains on her approach.

The nature is her most important source of inspiration, as everything ranging in everyday life.

Her work is a translation in porcelain of her personal experiences, trying to obliterate these traces during the process by simplifying the boundaries between real and abstract, in a swirl of textures and structures from which are foreseen flashes of gold.

A mix of very different stylistic contributions merged together allows her to create something very unique and monumental.

The rhythmic repetition of similar geometric modules reminds a certain abstractionism coming from Twentieth Century vanguards, especially when directed in movements and dynamics, accompanied by a visionary collection of shapes, colors and compositions that brings her creations in a more futuristic dimension.

At a more attentive look, a decorative narrative complements her language, recalling art deco and liberty expedients.

Irony and wonder are also instilled, by using sometime animals to build neck ruff.

Among nature and artifice, her works is placed in between of the ancient and the future.

Technically she works by maintaining a preference for ceramic materials, due to the transformation of the material from one state to another: once acquired a certain shape, it can’t return to what it was before. She likes to combine seemingly fragile ceramic material with metal hardness or the warmth of a fabric, then to submit the form to compositional experiments that create the most expressive side of her creations.

Just reporting her words when talking about the porcelain: ‘Every material has its own possibilities and limits to be worked, and even though I tried many materials, I always went back to the PORCELAIN for its properties, that’s why ninety percent of my pieces are made of porcelain, and in addition other materials like leather, rubber or metal. I like this material because it offers me a lot of techniques to work it: modeling, casting, cutting, I can join, solder or juxtapose it’

The porcelain is one of the few materials that brings wonder and astonishment when in the final status of the process. Always using Raluca’s words: 

‘it is a long path to become what you see, coming from the ground in the initial state of silicate mineral, it is processed in what we know as porcelain, then by the time it gets to me its future has been already established, the ideas of what it will become are already defined’

The use of white and gold gives her pieces the candor and pureness of supernatural creatures while for structures, dimensions and wearability she aims at achieving a sculptural statement.

Raluca Buzura attended the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, department ceramic-glass-metal, and then, from 2007, she followed master in the same section. During the studies, her works were focusing in the installation area, participating in various projects and exhibitions. Since 2009, the main focus becomes contemporary jewelry design.  

About the Contributing Writer

Ilaria Ruggiero is a cultural manager and curator working in the field of contemporary art. She is the founder of Adornment - Curating Contemporary Art Jewelry, a curatorial integrated project dedicated to contemporary art jewelry. It aims to develop the knowledge and consciousness of contemporary jewelry as artistic discipline and as ground search for technique, aesthetics, and philosophy.

www.adornment-jewelry.com