Ping Pong

The exhibition Ping/Pong was a Jeweler conversation in wich each artist, David Hardcastle and Samuel Guillén, exchanged a piece of jewelry in order to spark a response: another, new piece of jewelry.

The project began in September 2015 when Hardcastle and Guillén set the terms of the conversation and exchange a first piece: Ping #1. Each of them, as a result of this first exchange, then responded with a new piece: Pong #1.

The project consist in 5 iterations of this process, four pieces to each iteration, for a total of 20 pieces.

On the completion of each iteration the process began anew. At the time of each “dialogue”, David and Samuel met in order to discuss the specific “conversation”: impressions about what they had made, about the way they approached the first pieces (“Pings”); They discussed technical issues, materials, challenges and results (“Pongs”); they looked at the whole ensemble of four pieces and assessed the process in terms of aesthetic achievements, ideas and discoveries.

Each piece in the Ping/Pong conversation had a purpose within a dialogue in which each jeweler, while keeping his own investigations and obsessions, his own style and aesthetics, assimilates the other jeweler’s experience in a constantly growing and enriching process.

Ping/Pong was meant to result in a system of jewels, distinctively personal and at the same time grounded on a relational and generous creative exchange.