Wolfgang Rahs: Seven Skills and a Lot of Wilderness

(Hardback)

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The first monograph about the exceptional Austrian jewelry artist. Presented in English and German.

Wolfgang Rahs was drawing inspiration back in the 1970s from the avantgarde art scene in Graz, the Steirischer Herbst, and Forum Stadtpark, which is an action and interest collective formed by artists working in a wide variety of media and genres. He is also a member of Gruppe 77.

Wolfgang Rahs trained in both goldsmithing and metalworking at the Ortwein School in Graz, and since then he has continued to broaden his scope in the medium of art jewelry. He no longer makes molds, but instead takes casts of his environment: found pieces lying on the ground, tools he happens to come across in an abandoned workshop. Entire passages of texts from books are encapsulated and framed. Thus the works become an archive, a stock of cast forms that recall the original things while translating them into a more abstract idea. In doing so, Wolfgang Rahs has developed a way of thinking about the world with jewelry and our relationship to it that is entirely his own. What can we know seems to be the key question he asks. And what can we do a recurring motif in his work. He doesnt leave himself out of the equation. He assumes all imaginable roles himself: that of the artist, obviously, the researcher, the (jewelry) wearer, and even the role of the piece of jewelry itself.

The outcome is that his works oscillate between jewelry, installation, performance, and processual works free works that reflect the idea of jewelry on a universal scale.