ISLAND #3: GALATÉE PESTRE

Galatée Pestre, Lost Jewelry, brooch, gold, silver

Galatée Pestre collects lost jewels since ten years now, with help from some accomplices and without even looking for them, she finds them here and there, in the streets of Paris, in the meanders of the subway, but also when she travel. 

Galatée Pestre, Lost Jewelry, brooch, gold, silver

She keeps these found jewels in custom-made paper cases. Brought together they create a singularly lively and cheerful group, and one starts to fantasize about their journey, to imagine their story. Most of them are industrial costume jewelery; inexpensive maybe but missed all the same.

Galatée Pestre, Found Jewelry Collection, installation view

Moved by these objects full of life, the artist perpetuates them and so in turn she manufactures pieces of jewelry. Slowly and with all the precision of my trade, Galatée Pestre enjoys reproducing some of their shapes, paying a tribute to them in silver or gold, by printing them, mould them, reproduce their likeness in silicone, and then in metal.

Galatée Pestre, Found Jewelry, brooch, silicon, silver

Paul Ricoeur once wrote “I find myself only by losing myself”. These words seem fitting to speak about this project because it is Art that helps us to find the world piece by piece. The Lost/Found Jewelry body of work by Galatée feels like a nourishing form of meditation that brings the artist to reshape the world so as to find herself reflected in it. Through her pieces Galatée reaches a clarity that is complex, that avoids simplicity but at the same time complexity here is not a cold concept, instead it is a way that gets to know the world in many ways at once because while she is moved by absence she also lets absence move her imagination. If we agree with Rosmarie Waldrop when she says that to encounter anything fully is to touch its absence, with Lost/Found Jewelry Galatée finds new stories by looking for the spaces that absence leaves.

Galatée Pestre, Found Jewelry Collection, installation view