Biography
Johanna Dahm's approach is versatile and experimental. Her works show a deep intellectual understanding of the interaction between design and materials. Combined with her great craftsmanship and intensive teaching, she belongs to the most essential personalities of the author's jewelry world since the 1970s.
After her childhood in Cape Town, Johanna Dahm trained as a goldsmith at Zurich's Hochschule der Künste, the former Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. Afterwards, from 1974 to 1976, she produced a small series of aluminum and plastic pieces together with Beatrice Liaskowski in Winterthur as part of the joint studio 'Schmuck '74', which marked the beginning of her serial work. The main focus of the two artists was on kinetic effects created by moving elements and optical distortions. Their collaboration was always based on the motto of making jewelry from 'contemporary' materials for 'contemporary' people at affordable prices.
Johanna Dahm continued designing in series in her own studio in Zurich. The artist worked with Plexiglas, aluminum and rubber bands, among other materials. Many early works can be traced back to basic forms and basic colors. Especially through their often surprising size, the jewelry pieces realized with reduced forms create an impressive sculptural effect. Body and clothing are no longer just backgrounds for jewelry, but in the interplay of jewelry and body a sculptural piece that reaches into the space is created. This can also be seen at its core in Johanna Dahm's brooches of the 1980s. In the 'Durchsteck' and 'Ansteck' brooches, the jewelry artist makes the usually invisible brooching the main aesthetic matter. Made of aluminum, the graphic, sometimes dynamic-looking pins partially imprint on fabrics and knitwear, creating drapes so that the wearer's clothing becomes a conceptual component of the design.
Dahm's works range from the use of high-tech processes to pictorial organic abstractions, as can be seen in her anamorphic brooches of the 1990s. Last but not least, the goldsmith is always looking for non-European jewelry techniques. Thus she learned the traditional jewelry making of the African Ashanti or also the Dokra from India.
Johanna Dahm taught among others in Basel, Zurich, Jerusalem and Shanghai. From 1990 to 2005 she held a professorship at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Pforzheim. Her works have been awarded and published many times and are represented in international museums, galleries and exhibitions.
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