Kathleen Ryan
PROJECT
Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures comprise a range of materials, often seemingly at odds with the work’s subject matter, to distort our sense of value and desire. Ryan focuses on everyday items, recasting them as spectacular objects that reflect decadence and the cycle of life. Bad melon sits within her ongoing series of large-scale sculptures of fruit in various stages of decay, rendered with semi-precious stones. Ryan closely studies rotting fruit, recording the process and taking note of the different colours and textures that appear, as well as the mould that has grown, selecting stones that correspond.
ABOUT
Kathleen Ryan is an American sculptor internationally renowned for her visually whimsical and allegorical artworks that ask audiences to reconsider the everyday. Raised in Southern California and now based in New Jersey, her work moves between the organic and the industrial – fruit, flowers and bodily forms on one side, the iconography of leisure and manufacture on the other. Ryan studied at Pitzer College (BA, 2006) and the University of California, Los Angeles (MFA, 2014). She first gained broad attention with Bacchante, presented at the Theseus Temple, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in 2017, and has since exhibited internationally. Ryan’s works depict a tension between nature and society, waste and luxury, creation and decay. Her sculptures often carry multiple meanings and draw from different worlds. She uses biological forms, especially fruits at the edge of their ripeness, paired with industrial remnants such as car body panels and other pop-cultural detritus to beguiling effect.