"My artistic work explores lived experience and the processing of narratives. I aim to make experience, memory and relationships visible through my body-oriented jewellery and object works. The emotional value of things and the transformation of magical material are part of my work. Even if my works often result from personal experience, they create an open space for viewers."

Merlin Klein has been working as a freelance artist since 2015. After training as a pastry chef, he completed a goldsmithing apprenticeship at the Hanau State Academy of Drawing and studied to be a goldsmith under Professor Otto Künzli and Professor Karen Pontoppidan at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. From 2019 to 2024, he was the artistic assistant of Professor Hans Stofer and Professor Yuka Oyama in the Jewellery/Sculpture department of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design. Since August 2026, he teaches Jewellery and Design at the Hanau State Academy of Drawing.
His artistic practice focuses on content and the effect of objects, as well as the emotional value of things and their transformation. His body-oriented jewellery and object works understand material as a carrier of memory, relationship and narratives. Queer identity, politics and vulnerability are not explicit motifs but rather shape the mindset from which the works emerge. Friendship, fluidity and social responsibility are key points of reference in his practice. An exploration of authorship, artistic working conditions and the ambivalence of jewellery are a recurring theme in his work. Jewellery has the potential to create a closeness as well as cause irritation – and can sometimes also act as a form of resistance.