Shane Jewel explores the relationship between intimacy, memory, and emotional transformation through a practice that constructs jewellery as affective structures suspended between reality and imagination. In the context of his participation at AUTOR 2026, we spoke with the artist about The Lovers series, the tension within relationships, symbolism, fragility, and the way beauty is built through contradiction.
Love seems to take many different forms throughout your work. Has the way you understand it changed over time?
In The Lovers series, each work carries a similar emotional weight through the intimacy and emotional connections it presents, both visually and psychologically, while at the same time containing very different mental states.
I don’t see them as a linear progression. I’m not trying to describe a story of evolution where love becomes the background and the self becomes the protagonist. I see them more as juxtaposed and equal fragments, emotional slices from different moments in time.
For me, love is not a stable object or a clearly defined relationship resembling a contract. It is a structure full of misunderstandings, projections, repetitions, and reconstructions. It always begins from something almost newborn. Fragile, delicate, impossible to name. At that stage, it is a collection of collisions, contradictions, and conflicts.
But as time passes, it gradually becomes a vessel for a beauty that is impossible to deny. For me, this beauty is the most sublime thing produced through the reality of the relationship itself, mixed with the forgetting of unpleasant things and the fusion of beautiful fantasies. It slowly replaces, transforms, and becomes the very essence of intimacy. If viewed through the perspective of time, then it is indeed full of complicated transformations. And I try to express this complexity through my works.
The Lovers series feels deeply personal, yet it still leaves room for interpretation. How do you usually begin constructing a piece?
My methods of constructing a work are not always the same. In The Lovers series, most of the process is not actually the making of the jewellery itself. A much more important part is building the soul of the jewellery through personal memories, fantasies, writing, and drawing.
In this series, I introduced many personal experiences into the works, which is why they have such an intimate character. But I think the space they leave for interpretation does not necessarily come from deliberate restraint. It comes rather from a certain universality of intimacy itself. No matter how different relationships between people may be, misunderstanding, projection, dependency, desire, anxiety, and, of course, beauty always exist in different degrees.
So although the works come from very specific and personal experiences, they activate similar emotional structures in those who encounter them.
Other works of mine, however, have developed entirely through the making process itself. I constantly analyze the creative processes that attract me most, trying to arrive at certain conclusions about myself. Recently, I think I’ve become more inclined to construct works starting from reading and writing.
In general, I don’t believe creative methods should be fixed. I place more importance on a principle of “necessity.” A work must be generated in the way it feels it needs to be generated. If it has to begin from writing, then writing is no longer just preparation, but becomes part of the work itself. If that necessity does not exist, then the creative method can be free or even arbitrary.
For me, this method of building the soul in The Lovers is irreplaceable. I must admit it is a very personal form of expression. And then, naturally, it began generating its own universal qualities, open to interpretation.
Your works often move between memory, imagination, and emotion. What draws you to this space between reality and fiction?
I describe what I consider to be the most sublime thing: the result produced through the reality of things themselves, mixed with the forgetting of unpleasant things and the fusion of beautiful fantasies. A kind of almost idealized beauty.
This beauty is unstable. It constantly moves between reality, memory, emotion, and imagination. That is why I am inevitably drawn to these blurred and overlapping states. For me, intimacy itself is difficult to place entirely on either the side of “reality” or “fiction.”
I am not someone who dreams often, but when dreams appear, they always provoke surprise and shock in me. In dreams, hybrid, abnormal, and uncontrollable forms always emerge. These forms are, to some extent, manifestations of reality combined with what I desire. I try to bring them into my works: the flower’s umbilical cord in Tender as a Bruise, the swing between dead branches in Hotbed.
Emotion fits perfectly with the absurdity of these hybridizations. My longing for dreams and the way I understand relationships keep me suspended between surrealism, imagination, and reality.
Some pieces feel tender, others slightly uncomfortable. Do you think intimacy and tension naturally coexist?
I believe everything contains contradiction. Nothing is absolutely correct and perfect, just as nothing is entirely wrong or inferior. And this contradiction also exists within relationships.
The idea appears very directly in my works. In every piece, I try to let beauty dominate visually. But it is precisely through this beauty that it becomes possible to notice that the elements constructing it are not necessarily entirely positive.
For example, in Idealistic, the geometric universe inhabited by the central doll-like figure is built from a perfect heart-shaped gemstone cut into two halves. For the doll sculpture, this space may seem like an ideal and suitable world. But for the stone itself, once whole and carrying strong symbolism, this division destroys the whole and suggests collapse, heartbreak, and other negative associations.
For me, tension always exists within intimacy. And I hope to convey this perspective through my works.
Symbolism constantly appears throughout the series, though never in a completely direct way. What interests you about things left unresolved?
As I mentioned earlier, I have always been drawn to those unconventional things in dreams that cannot be fully controlled or explained. They often share qualities that are difficult to define clearly. For this very reason, dreams simultaneously contain a strange universality and a unique singularity.
For me, dreams can transform something deeply personal — an emotion or an experience — into a visual structure with a certain universal perceptual quality. And this “universality” then continues generating the interpretations and projections of each viewer.
In The Lovers series, I borrowed the unconventional, hybrid, and almost surreal language often found in dreams. It comes from my fascination with dreams, but it is also a method. Starting from the mysterious nature of dreams, I want the works to generate and expand their own meanings.
Transformation seems present throughout your entire practice. What changes the most during the making process?
I think what changes the most is the meaning of the work itself. As I said before, I try to express something very personal, but the works begin generating new meanings independent of what I initially intended.
The personal meanings I start from also do not emerge from a complete and clear narrative. They come rather from fragments of stories formed from vague emotions, structures, or sensations difficult to name precisely. Because of this, transformations within the original narrative occur constantly and make the meaning of the work continuously drift.
At the same time, during the making process, materials, proportions, center of gravity, comfort in wearing, and even very subtle structural changes constantly alter the psychological states conveyed by the works.
Sometimes an emotion that initially seemed delicate becomes dangerous because of structural changes, while certain parts that carried tension begin generating intimacy through the intervention of gloss or color.
All these things modify, to some extent, the meanings I originally intended to communicate. But for me, this loss of control over meaning and the process of creating new relationships through it can themselves become a response to love and intimacy. And these new understandings make the works richer. For me, that is something deeply positive.
Your practice brings together craftsmanship, personal experience, and cultural references. How do these elements find their place within the work?
In Promise, I borrowed one of the most recognizable engagement ring structures in contemporary jewellery because it is no longer merely a jewellery form, but a cultural symbol connected to commitment, intimacy, and systems of value.
For me, these three elements are not completely separate. They already contain overlapping meanings. For example, in the six-prong setting, craftsmanship fundamentally overlaps with the cultural dimension. Without the technical component, the symbolic weight of the cultural reference could not be emphasized. Without the cultural component, it would remain only an ordinary setting structure.
I tried to alter this feeling of stability through a very subtle “misalignment.” The central stone is slightly displaced from the center. This displacement questions the appearance of an “eternal relationship,” but it also comes from a personal experience: doubt, hesitation, and uncertainty toward a certain promise.
When this seemingly stable structure begins to shift, it naturally starts evoking psychological associations connected to language, desire, and intimacy. This is how the red lip-like structure emerged as well. It transforms the ring from a precious object meant to be looked at into an object that seems to speak, repeat promises, or even swallow them.
In Promise, there are no clear boundaries between cultural reference, craftsmanship, and personal experience. Together, they participate in generating the meaning of the work and form my reinterpretation of the idea of a “promise.”
For me, these three elements are not “combined.” Through overlap, displacement, and continuous regeneration, they naturally become the same whole.
What does it mean for you to present The Lovers series within the context of AUTOR 2026?
First of all, I am very grateful for AUTOR’s trust and selection. The Lovers is currently a very important body of work for me.
Presenting a series about intimacy and emotional structures within a public context is actually quite challenging. Because it is not only about exposing a private experience, but about transforming something deeply personal into a public structure that can be looked at, misunderstood, and reprojected.
I have always considered The Lovers a series without a real “ending.” It does not exist in a fully completed state, but rather as a structure that continues to grow through time, experience, and relationships. That is why I do not want to define too early what it may become.
At this moment, my works are full of discussions about “boundaries.” Not only conceptual boundaries, but also boundaries related to materials, value, and the definition of jewellery itself. For example, where is the boundary between fine jewellery and contemporary jewellery? Does the value of jewellery come from materials and craftsmanship, or from the psychological and cultural structures it carries?
I believe AUTOR’s selection and context respond, to some extent, to these questions.
No matter how much the discourse around contemporary jewellery expands, we inevitably return to the most fundamental and impossible-to-avoid questions: love, desire, loss, time, and the instability of human relationships.
I think The Lovers constantly reminds me of the existence of these questions while simultaneously trying to turn them back toward the viewer.
What do you hope remains with someone after spending time with your works?
I am not sure how each person will understand these works, because I have always believed that looking is an ongoing process of projection and regeneration of meaning.
But if I were to speak only about what I hope for, I would like people, after spending time with the works, to be able to ignore for a moment judgments related to the value of jewellery, hierarchies of materials, or attributes of consumption, and reconnect with simpler and more essential things.
Perhaps they will remember a beautiful moment, an intimate relationship, or an emotion difficult to describe. Or perhaps it will not be about memory, but about becoming aware of an emotion that exists right now, in the present.
I also hope the works remind them that these seemingly fragile, brief, and unstable moments of beauty are precisely what make them precious. The way we understand them, respond to them, and even give something back to them represents a very important part of intimacy.
For me, The Lovers ultimately does not try to offer an answer about “love,” but rather a reactivation of sensitivity toward “beauty,” an almost sublime perception of emotional connection between people.
AUTOR 2026
May 16–17 | National Museum of Romanian History – Lapidarium
AUTOR is one of the leading platforms dedicated to contemporary jewellery in Central and Eastern Europe, bringing together international artists, galleries, collectors, and an audience interested in the contemporary object as a form of cultural expression.