W36” x L45”, dimensions and height adjustable
Steel
Mystic and ethereal qualities inhabit water and metal. They capture curiosity with light and darkness alike. The seductive transparency of water simultaneously reveals and conceals, similarly to metal’s shine. There is something old in our brains that responds to luster and lures us closer.
I Imagine a galactic shape, an action with a spinning motion and sheen. Picture an image of restless, watery chaos churning at the dawn of time. I search for the moment when the very first raindrop of the cosmic ocean fell on Earth and imagine the water pouring down for centuries. Like a universe winding into existence, circling and entangling waves of metal expand in space into a turmoiling cloud of matter, condensing in the middle into a single drop. Order out of chaos – the drop can also be viewed as a shiny new point of consciousness emerging.
Hanna Ryynänen’s art grows from the background in jewelry, but she moves fluently between materials and different fields of visual art. Currently, working mainly with steel and other metals, she listens for life inside materials and lets them unravel through transformation. As a maker, she searches for vital signs within materials and processes, and creates objects and installations.
Through ancient materials, Ryynänen arranges thoughts about life and birth, about an ultimate coincidence. She depicts time, growth, and change and reaches towards the qualities some of life’s major unanswered questions evoke. She thinks about countless possibilities of existing and what it means to be alive, as these questions remain forever enigmatic and unanswered, stirring our minds. The artist believes in beauty of mystery, where there still is room for imagination to grow.
Hanna Ryynänen is a visual artist and jeweler from Lappeenranta, Finland. She majored in jewelry art and graduated from Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in 2016. Since then, her works have traveled internationally in renowned exhibitions such as METALLOphone in Lithuania, KORU-triennials in Finland, Northern Light in The Netherlands, and Talente in Germany. Her pieces can also be found in the collections of The Finnish State Art Commission and Kuopio Art Museum.
At the moment, Ryynänen is studying for her master’s degree at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the Metalsmithing Department, 2024.
