- The first monograph on Israeli jewelry artist Attai Chen
- Philosophical jewelry that reflects life and death, becoming and going
- Art historian Glenn Adamson and philosopher Sool Park introduce this extraordinary body of works
All the Worlds a Stage grants an in-depth insight into the fascinating oeuvre of the Israeli artist Attai Chen (19792023). The series of jewelry presented in the book take a poetical look at the perpetual becoming and passing of life and of things, reflecting the complexity of these existential themes, at times with humor, other times with foreboding. In 2022 the artist himself described it thus: I was always fascinated by the endless cyclical flow of things, be they in nature or in the man-made world; the movement of growth aimed at the fleeting moment of its realization, the consummation of this moment, followed by decay and finally a new beginning.
Text in English and German.
5 Glenn Adamson
SMALL WORLDS, AFTER ALL
9 TERRA MUTANTICA
20 Sool Park
CORDYCEPS
21 CORDYCEPS SURVIVORS
32 MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
50 Sool Park
SILENT DOWNFALLS, ALWAYS GAZING UPWARD
51 DIORAMAS
82 PRAYER NUTS
96 GERMAN TEXTS
102 Attai Chen
CV
Sool Park is a junior professor for intercultural philosophy at the University of Hildesheim. Recent academic works include Paradoxien der Grenzsprache und das Problem der Übersetzung (2022, dissertation) and Histories of Philosophy and Thought in Korean Language (2023). He has translated works by Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Trakl, and Hölderlin into Korean. Glenn Adamson is a curator and writer who works at the intersection of craft, design history, and contemporary art. He has previously been director of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; head of research at the V&A, London; and curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee. Adamsons publications include Thinking through Craft; The Craft Reader; Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (co-edited with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft; Art in the Making (co-authored with Julia Bryan-Wilson); Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects; and Craft: An American History. He earned his BA in History of Art at Cornell University in 1994 and his PhD in Art History at Yale University in 2001.
