NIKLAS LINK
CHARACTERS
"In search of my totem, I observe my surroundings, my habitat and let myself be influenced by cultures. It is an individual process in which I understand the self-portrait as a possibility of self-questioning, with the help of which I can represent what interests, moves or impresses me. Representations of animals are an elementary and unifying symbol of all cultures.
With the constant development of my work, the attraction of discovering animal representations as self-portraits in the face has become the focus of attention. For me it is a comprehensible way to find its totem, the soul animal. The face serves as a place of transformation, with which another character comes to light. Starting from sketches on a picture of my face, I construct the hollow steel bodies with the help of a micro welding machine. I leave the welding seams almost untouched, as they allow the association with human scar tissue. With the choice of steel as a material, a small allegorical accent is additionally placed on the transience and changeability of living beings: as they age, so do my objects. By wearing them they live, they get traces. Where the surface rubs off, they can begin to rust over time. They form their individual patina.
The resulting characters are abstract images of soul animals that transform, in a spiritual sense, into a series of totems. Thus the hollow steel bodies take over the function of soul carriers. Transferred into the context of jewellery, I see the small sculptures as a new interpretation of ancestral or signet rings and brooches, which take on the function of a medallion in the traditional sense.
If someone is touched by the charisma of one of the characters, a process is underway which David Hume sums up in one sentence in "The natural history of religion": „There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiary acquainted and of which they are intimately conscious.“
