Der Tiefenglanz: Deep Gloss is a collaboration between contemporary jeweller Karl Fritsch and photographer Gavin Hipkins which plays on notions of perception.

This exhibition brings together work from collections from across Aotearoa for a large scale exhibition of Fritsch and Hipkins’ collaborative practice. The Deep Gloss of this work—and its contradictions—are further enforced through the ways in which this collaboration is an independent endeavour for both artists. The jeweller and photographer have been creating art together for over a decade—with Hipkins printing images from his collection of negatives for Fritsch to mount and adorn. The changes made, or the gloss that is added, are more than simply surface decorative flourishes but direct challenges to our perception of creative control, power dynamics and singular authorship.

The idea that there is no meaning to be found beyond the technical skill and monetary value of both photography and jewellery has been an insidious belief that Fritsch and Hipkins have disrupted in their fields. In this work we see examples of it in the ways in which Hipkins manipulates the process of printing photographs to purposefully distort or solarise the images, while Fritsch subverts the traditional notion of value in jewellery existing simply through the use of precious metals and stones by ‘destroying’ Hipkins’ photographs with them.

The archive is also a critical factor in this work. Both artists mine their archives of images and materials to create the compositions. The archive, as an object and idea, is a place of memory. But an archive is complicated and without context it is a labyrinth. In the use of their own individual hoarded images and materials Fritsch and Hipkins continue to expose contradictions. By combining their archives, they reveal to us that meaning is unstable and subject to change through the whims of time, circumstances, and the intervention of others.

There is humour, violence, beauty and horror in these works. Images are pierced, scratched or adorned with the precious and the profane. This contrast is at the core of this work—they are evidence of both creation and destruction, value and loss.