Syz Art Jewels presents “Dino Runes” by Kerstin Brätsch

Bringing new life to the conservative format of jewelry display and presentation, Suzanne Syz, founder of Syz Art Jewels, invites contemporary artists to reenvision the jewelry box as sculpture. For the fourth project in this ongoing annual series, Syz commissioned the German-born New York–based artist Kerstin Brätsch, an innovative artist known for her interest in older handmade techniques sometimes made in collaboration with master craftsmen. By bringing vernacular practices into her work today, she produces anachronistic pairings that push the conversation around contemporary painting forward.

For Syz Art Jewels she produced an all-over wallpaper environment based on images of marble stones and by using marbling, a process in which water and ink forms a visual imitation of stone. She has superimposed on this background 3-D renderings of dinosaurs, juxtaposing an extinct ancient life with new technology. Brätsch also designed five unique amorphous glass jewelry cases filled with volcanic stones. For Brätsch, the connections between these natural materials create a dialogue as old as the diamonds that were present at the beginning of the Earth’s existence. Those stones used for jewelry survive today, exhaling their telluric vibrations and vibrant presence.