And it was red, 2002


The new cycle of jewellery "Iosis" by Peter Ruudt's Red is a color at all as the oldest name, derived from the Sanskrit rudhira. Under all the colours it is the one which was made first in complex contexts of symbolic meaning. And with her join elementary mental Urerfahrungen of humanity.

Red is the color of desire, of pleasure and of pain. Of fire, blood and violence. It gives the love of color as anger. Red can beguile, entice and seduce, shock to the stupor. Red puts in an uproar. Is intrusive, has a penchant for the vulgar, radiates aggressiveness and also generated. Red is the color of the ecstatic States, the threat, the obsession. Red heat radiates, glowing, pulsating, is alive. The morning is red - and in the evening as well. Red is ambivalent.

In the ancient Hellas, one wrapped in red linen amulets or band on a red string, to ward off evil. The Roman bride wore a red veil to the wedding, the Flammeum, signs of love and fertility. Red in its biblical meaning oscillates between Sin and punishment. And a quite central role to play of color in the Asian culture, where it is equally present in everyday life like in the spiritual life, as the color of happiness and as a symbol of the enlightenment in the robes of Buddhist monks.

Many art professionals have succumbed to the fascination of Red - just think of the monochrome abstractions in glowing vermilion or dark purple of an Ellsworth Kelly, the aggressive cadmium red of Barnett Newman or in Louise Bourgeois' installation "Red Rooms". The color from an other point of nearing Ruudt Peters and although quite reluctantly, he cherishes but a profound dislike for them. "Iosis" is the title of his new jewellery cycle, named after the stage of the "redness", the dawn, the completion and of making a new start in the alchemical process. And apparently in one act of self-control, Ruudt Peters Red dyes consistently all his work. Selbstquälerischer intent? To complete an once trodden path in his work which for the first time in 1997 dealt with the system of accompanying colors of alchemical metamorphoses in the work group "Lapis", finally? Or a revelation following an inner necessity?

To the tuning in to "Iosis" traveled Ruudt Peters six months Asia following in the footsteps of the color red, and let his impressions first into a porcelain project incorporated, that - is also named after the alchemical color Canon - "Rubedo". Here, still a distinct aversion to the material, a slightly malleable, pliable, too docile mass without character, which highly irritated the artist who loves the resistance of the metal, joins to the aversion to the red. The results are powerful, compact, hermetically sealed objects, bone-like double forms or structures that are reminiscent of corals, vessel or vase-like structure, egg-shaped, occasionally also strange biomorphic body with unpleasant excesses, solidified movements equal. Different red tones predominate, but there are also Virgin white, gold with red primer that is as tender Craquelé - and a raw Brown, which carries the Red than broken promises. Peters goes to irreverently with the unloved material, whose being has to manifest - Western ideas after - in fragile, thin and translucent objects of graceful lightness. "Rubedo" rather follows the Chinese tradition and presents itself as a real flood difficult contributor, cross of opaque objects, who know to hide the qualities of porcelain under a layer of glaze. Until then, Peter's dedicated to the jewelry.

The jewellery objects of the work group "Iosis" are not just a revelation in terms of beauty and resemble at first shapeless lump of reddish clay or rock groups. As they are so little got and at best strange it may admitted only once ever no jewellery capability to them one. Only the Red cords or small mounting mechanisms give rise to a vague suspicion that it perhaps but to jewelry could be on the hermetically encapsulated from, irregular bodies. This confirmed that, as soon as you touch the objects, it takes in hand, trying to reassign them or to infect: they decay - into two, three or even more parts-, move against each other and the viewer opens. But a revelation.

"The jewelry the inner life interested me more", Ruudt Peters famous once in a conversation. For "Pneuma", for example, the Interior is empty and the exterior is similar to a shell, a striped off insect cocoon. The Interior of the "Ouroboros" is hidden under a thick coat of paint and only reveals his secret by the wear and tear of frequent gestational carriers becoming: the beauty is a promise. When "Iosis", however, the inside is laid bare for the first time - through the Act of wearing. And it proves an unexpected breathtaking, mysterious wonder world, a fascinating microcosm.

The body of jewellery in bright Vermillion, abysmal red black shades, dark heart Blutrot, Cretaceous-pink or shiny Rotorange consist of at least two moving into each other appropriate parts. One can cut out from the other, or two halves to make a whole zusammengfügt be taking part as ornament is supported, which lags other as functionless fragment and restore its entirety endure. Not always, the parts will be torn apart such; Sometimes they are moved only against each other, to make a trailer together or the original form into multiple panes broken down, line up a string for elements of a Halsschmuckes. In any case, the ability to catch a view of the inner workings of the body, which soft pink, yellow, white, lilac or pale green Shimmers offers. The smooth sections with circles arranged in concentric and colored tape movement reminiscent of agate in their organisation. Other sections of the Red bulbous formations bring a fantastic micro-structure of small chambers to light, blättriger or frothy-looking, porous consistency and more complicated tectonics; tiny cavities, such as by gas bubbles in the rock are, fill the Interior. At the edges of the cut surfaces thin lines are visible, of which one always silvery Shimmers. Sometimes a substance oozes out, the fine steel wool not unlike sieht....die structures are diverse, complex constructed from unprecedented aesthetic.

"Iosis", is the molten magma, whose Inneres gives birth to crystals? A little-known species of agate? The stone of the wise about? Certainly, the alchemists had their joy at the main component of this enigmatic jewellery objects: polyurethane. A "growing" plastic, a magical material of modern times, which increases its volume in an eigendynamischen chemical process and puffs up to schaumartigen forms, which - as soon as the limit of the ability to expand is reached - air freeze, loosely like a meringue or compact as metal flow. The other components are silver, textiles and acrylic paint, occasionally coral and Garnet.

One can approach perhaps best of the meaning of "Iosis", if you look at the creative process of the pieces. Each is a dual cavity forged in silver, which is deformed by the infusion of polyurethane is damaged, deformed by the Expansionskraft of plastic. To the destructive potential to curb the kind of negative energy, but also to protect the injured structure and preserve wrapped Ruudt Peters it in almost ritual fashion with countless layers of cloth, bandage it with silk and cotton scraps, as it envelops offerings or sacred objects in Buddhist temples in zeremoniale, infused with spiritual significance and supernatural healing powers textiles, and sealed it with a thick layer of red paint. The result is a closed, impermeable non-form. No jewelry. The latter constituted only through the Act of Zerschneidens of violent, impatient, intemperate, lustful, may also be on it in the objects. There are no careful, surgically precise cuts, but spontaneous, brutal Zerspaltungen, left, bending the ripped-up injuries. And on just these interfaces, the jewelry unfolds his entire spell, his Auric charisma, his unexpected and unintended, unpredictable beauty.

If Red is a State of consciousness, an emotional state of mind, then Ruudt Peters comes him in this somewhat creative act of destruction, by which the objects are placed in jewelry in the closest. Beyond systematic engagement with the color which is it deeply contrary to and from which he feels, not to get it, he lets overwhelm in the spontaneous action of Zerschneidens from her, allows one to them and is headed by her: he feels"the Red". As the Alchemist is looking for the veredelnde bottom line, the stone of the wise men, ultimately in himself in a process of self-discovery and-läuterung, the creative act of jewelry making here by a similar trending mental operation is accompanied refuses in his verbal decryption privacy - and must remain as unfathomable as the question of the original form of silver fitting, which stood at the beginning of every jewellery object and the form of which is in the process of growth is lost.