Kathleen RyanSweet Nothings, 2025Aluminum and bowling balls
57.8 x 47.6 x 56.5 cm
Karma
Kathleen Ryan’s sculptural practice performs a quiet act of alchemy. Commonplace objects—fruit, flowers, balloons, even spider webs—are transformed into crystalline doubles of themselves, shimmering with semi-precious stones and beads. At once seductive and unsettling, these works meditate on consumer culture, desire, and the fragile boundary between beauty and decay.
By pairing materials such as cast iron and carved marble with gemstones that glint like sugar or mould, Ryan invites viewers to reconsider value, excess, and impermanence.
Born in 1984 in Santa Monica, California, Ryan studied art and archaeology at Pitzer College in Claremont. She went on to receive an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied under Charles Ray and Catherine Opie—an education that helped shape her distinctive blend of conceptual rigor and material sensuality.
Signature Works: Bad Fruit
Ryan is best known for her ongoing Bad Fruit series (2018– ), a body of work that appears, from afar, to depict oversized fruit in various states of rot. Closer inspection reveals that these forms are meticulously encrusted with gemstones and beads, transforming decay into something precious.
The series probes questions of worth and transience, juxtaposing luxurious materials with the abject reality of spoilage.
In Bad Lemon (Armadillo) (2021), for example, Ryan deploys tiger eye, agate, and turquoise to mimic the mottled greens and blues of Penicillium mould.
The result is both repellent and irresistible—an object that crystallizes the tension between attraction and revulsion.
The dialogue between hardness and softness is central to Ryan’s work.
Beyond the beaded, jewel-like surfaces of Bad Fruit, she frequently incorporates discarded automobile parts and industrial debris.
In her Generator series, rusting mechanical components—evoking the vocabulary of urban infrastructure—are reconfigured into organic forms such as clamshells.
Kathleen RyanDreamhouse, 2025Malachite, azurite, lapis lazuli, amazonite, aventurine, turquoise, chrysocolla, magnesite, howlite, amethyst, garnet, serpentine, quartz, chalcedony and quartz stalactite, fluorite, coral chalcedony, zeolite, larimar, sodalite, calcite, acrylic, steel, aquaresin, stainless-steel nails, and steel pins on coated polystyrene
212.1 x 212.1 x 219.7 cm
KARMA
These are often threaded with delicate, beaded spider webs, further complicating the opposition between natural and industrial, fragile and durable.
Ryan has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. Selected solo presentations include:
Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (25 October 2024–16 March 2025)
KATHLEEN RYAN, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (17 May–11 August 2024)
Head and Heart, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (12 January–14 May 2023)
Kathleen Ryan, Karma, New York (6 May–19 June 2021)
Cultivator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (8 February–21 April 2019)
Selected group exhibitions include Tender Loving Care at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2023); The Stomach and the Port, Liverpool Biennial (2021); Accelerate Your Escape, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020); Desert X, Coachella Valley (2019); and Frieze Sculpture, Regent’s Park, London (2018).
Kathleen Ryan Show Pony, 2025 Aluminum, powder coating, and glass 48.3 x 40 x 50.8 cm Karma
Ryan’s work is held in major public collections worldwide, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Hammer Museum, Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas), ICA Boston, Kistefos Museum, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Her growing critical and commercial recognition culminated in representation by Gagosian in 2024, with her debut exhibition at the gallery scheduled for 2026.
As her crystalline forms continue to seduce and disturb, Kathleen Ryan stands out as a sculptor who turns the residues of consumption into objects of haunting beauty.
