Iris Eichenberg


Iris Eichenberg is a German post-war, contemporary artist, metalsmith, and educator. She is head of the Metalsmithing Department at the Cranbook Academy of Art.

Early life and education

Born Göttingen, Germany, in 1965, Eichenberg graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 1994.

Career

Eichenberg taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie beginning in 1996, and became head of the Jewelry Department from 2000–2007. She has been Artist in Residence and head of the Metalsmithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan since 2006.

Critical Reception

The Cranbrook Museum of Art review of her work for her "Bend" exhibit noted it "...is renowned for its diverse collections and challenges to the definitions of craft and jewelry; the result is an unconventional retrospective of her twenty-five-year career told through a body of new work."
Of Eichenberg's art Dora Apel wrote that her works "convey a searching spirit that permeates Iris Eichenberg’s work, which often meditates on making home and finding our place in the world. Related in some way to the body, her constructions produce sensorial and emotional effects that stretch conventional boundaries to explore structures of feeling".

Selected exhibits

Eichenberg's works are in permanent collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Schmuck Museum Pforzheim, the Fondation National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her group exhibitions at international venues have included the Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, CaixaForum, Frans Hals Museum, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and Museum Boymans van Beuningen.

Solo exhibits