Jewelry and modern art provide complementary and contrasting visions in “Adornment and Equanimity,” which will launch Caro, Mark Wilson’s new jewelry line, while pitting it with the striking abstractions of the late artist-academic Florencio B. Concepcion, at León Gallery in Legazpi Village, Makati, on Nov. 7-10.

Reacting to the industrial production of jewelry as status symbols and stylish vanities, Wilson has named the collection, perhaps mockingly, as “Caro,” Spanish for “expensive.”

In Caro, Wilson seeks to restore the ancient use of jewelry as symbols of a belief system—
jewelry is not just used for adornment but as a means for the wearer to form a conduit to the divine, for protection, devotion and reverence.

Caro, said Wilson, remodels found jewelry forms representing belief systems, including Thai Buddhist talismans, Filipino Christian anting-anting, florencitas or sinampagita, and hollow tumpal granulated beads, originally part of pre-Hispanic necklaces. Highly valued, these beads were later incorporated into colonial-era rosaries.

Exceptional finds are the reclaimed silver beads that Wilson found on two heirloom necklaces from the Cordilleras, which he repurposed as earrings. Forged between 1565-1680, the spherical beads called tumpal correlate with the introduction of European-Moresque styling, combined with Chinese influence during the period.

Possibly produced in Ilocos, a precolonial jewelry production center, the exquisitely made silver beads are joined together as two plain hemispheres decorated with tumpal granulation, displaying granules radiating in a triangular pattern on the top and bottom.

Wilson is creative director of Wilson Escalona Design, a firm specializing in light-centric interiors and architecture.

He took up Art History with a minor in Photography at Harvard University and Masters in Lighting Design at Parsons New York.

Wilson’s restored and repurposed jewelry are juxtaposed against Concepcion’s works, mostly in oil-on-canvas from the 1960s, creating an intersection of color, wearable assemblage and painterly abstraction.

A unique trove of metal and gemstone shimmers against bold but peaceful abstraction.

Concepcion (1933-2006) was the first dean of the school of fine arts of the University of the East. He was part of a new generation of painters that emerged in the mid-’60s from the progressive postwar period. He influenced such artists as Augusto Albor, Romulo Galicano and Lao Lian Ben.

Art critic S.A. Pilar wrote of Concepcion’s work: “His colors complement his characteristic evocation of spatial depth through the texture of his medium, being in a deep sense of harmony or tonal contrast.”

Wilson said he recognizes the security and depth that emanates from Concepcion’s work; although strong and bold, it is without frippery. He said he imagines his clients in the same vein: as people who are secure and make bold, but simple and stylish choices. Hence, “Adornment and Equanamity.” —CONTRIBUTED

León Gallery is at Eurovilla 1, Legazpi Sts., Makati.