USTER.- German artist Tobias Rehberger has designed several new pieces for Gems and Ladders, a jewellery collection designed by contemporary artists. The three rings, entitled YES, NO, MAYBE are the result of a close collaboration between the artist and Gems and Ladders. The rings are available to purchase online and in private sales, as well as at selected museum shops worldwide.

Tobias Rehberger (*1966), artist and professor at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany, considers art as a form of social interaction. Not only with regards to its reception, but also the creation and production of his work. This explains the numerous co-productions and collaborations with artists, designers and specialists from other disciplines, including with Gems and Ladders. Rehberger, who is as renowned for his space-filling installations as for his minimal artistic interventions, is interested in direct exchange, and his work often refers to concrete living environments. Thus, for the canteen of the Paul-Löbe-Haus, a building used for committee meetings of the German Bundestag, he created furniture of a classical design, which was then built by craftsmen from other cultures. For the city of Oberhausen, he created a 450-metre-long sculpture that acts as a bridge over the Rhein- Herne-Kanal, while for the 2009 Venice Biennale, he designed Was Du liebst, bringt Dich auch zum Weinen, an installation used as a cafeteria and for which he was awarded the Golden Lion. Rehberger continually questions the functions of art and its concrete aesthetics; a playful process that occasionally leads to the destruction or reversal of said aesthetic.

This was certainly the case for the rings Tobias Rehberger designed for Gems and Ladders. The starting point was a ring that had lost its gemstone: “Where the stone had been, a piece of skin was now visible, making the ring much more personal in my eyes.” For his design, Rehberger worked with three classic ring settings in either gold, silver or bronze, which he covered with a layer of paint reminiscent of plastic; a further reflection on the (in-)visible value of jewellery. The precious metals underneath appear, if at all, only through wear and tear; or on the inside of the rings, where the titles YES, NO and MAYBE are engraved. Whichever ring is chosen is revealing, while at the same time, says almost nothing about the wearer. This is an ambiguity the artist intended: "I wanted to make a piece of jewellery that reflects on what it can mean to someone to wear jewellery."