Kathleen Ryan’s Art, The Fruit Of Every Season

Finding the beauty in the ugly, the rotten and the unexpected: that’s what Kathleen Ryan does. Born in Los Angeles, California in 1984, this NYC-based sculptor brings to the table a unique approach, turning the decay of the mundane into marvelous, large-scale, one of a kind pieces. Ryan’s sculptures have a physical presence that doesn’t go unnoticed, they demand to be seen but the request pays off, as each sculpture offers a multitude of details for the eye to rest (and marvel) upon.

But it doesn’t end there, each piece recasts found and hand-made objects into works of art, “hieroglyphs of Americana” as some say. This archeologist/artist uses as medium a variety of materials, that go from bowling balls and deconstructed campers to utilitarian concrete and semi-precious gemstones. She uses relics of the day to day life like moldy fruits, jewelry and domestic fixtures as allegories for sexuality, decadence, and the cycle of life – which are some of her favorite topics to tackle.

The ability to transform cast iron, carved marble, granite and found objects into human-size, larger than life references of natural forms and industrially manufactured produce, that are actually vessels that contain her views on our society and our current cultural landscape, is truly an art and we can’t argue with that. The Liverpool Biennial has this to say about Ryan’s body of work: “Ryan engages with formal sculptural concerns such as volume, weight, pressure, balance, and line, while subtly alluding to the material’s historical and economic underpinnings, along with frequent references to the human body and classical motifs. Combining both found and forged elements, Ryan’s sculptures negotiate the organic and the mechanic, acting as reminders of extraction.”

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Kathleen Ryan

kathleen Ryan biography