One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and your ruined lunch is the next masterpiece by artist Kathleen Ryan. His sculptures—both stunningly brilliant and sordid—offer a transmissive joy found not in the rational denial of death or memory, but in exposing their entrails. Notice the raspberry bound mold matrices are perfectly executed under Ryan’s careful hand. Half a peach with a pit Harley Davidson engine. A toy ring—one that a child might ask for, accept and discard in the same weekend—given as a vowed image, too heavy to hold and, like most of his works, too magical to forget.
Ryan’s recently closed exhibition at Karma Los Angeles, “Souvenir,” revealed nine sculptures and, with them, a survey of the decadent and the gross. In the first room of the exhibition, two shining pieces of large bread, Starstruck again Sunset Stripleaning against different walls like props in a cabaret. Starstruck it’s a burnt piece of toast and an unmixed geode. Gold flakes—interspersed with jasper, amber and amber eye beads—are set beside pools of obsidian rock and bubbling lava and flow in alternating swirls and starbursts. Sunset Strippink and rotten, it boasts a campaign of gray and purple smears that echo the cumulus clouds along the dark sky.
“Bad Fruit,” a collection of jewel-encrusted fruit frozen in various stages of decay, is perhaps Ryan’s best-known series, but it’s only one variation on an often-revisited theme. He often mines everyday ephemera for inspiration and subject matter: hot rods, motorcycles, oranges and disposable kit. His performance is Pop, however he belongs more to the unpopular, ubiquitous parts of modern life than to fashion and innovation. For Ryan, ironically, art is about rust, not diamonds.
Ryan’s photos are as easily captivating as they are repulsive. In fact, they hold this variable tightly, combining good and bad. Decay is a very good system as it is a Penicillium episode. The Dreamhouse—a molding kingdom the size of a garden shed—is a testament to this fact. The bramble is characterized by clusters of red drupelets, embedded in cracks of jade, azure, seafoam and reflections of lilac fungi. The crimson center opens to a grotto of palescent quartz stalactites and amethyst hills. Ryan often keeps precious stones in decayed parts, most of which are placed on their imperfect, mismatched edges.
In scale and size alone, Ryan’s sculptures are comparable to public monuments, but almost always work in contrast to statues dedicated to dignitaries. Memories want immortality, Ryan wants to embalmed. His sculptures serve as memento mori—physical reminders of the death and decay that await us all. Ryan’s practice is often compared to Dutch vanitas, a Baroque-period still life of withered flowers, dwindling hourglasses, rotting food and melted candlesticks that depict the futility of worldly desires. However, with his willful materialism and his only view of triviality and waste, Ryan adds a commentary on the excess and waste of shopping, and their afterlife.
Heavy Heart, Show the pony again Sweet Things—three sculptures of similar size and similar subject matter—are the kind of reminders of emotion and taste that Ryan is known for. Their soft bodies and perfect curves act as a simulacra, a front for emotional transmission. The newly launched collection sees Ryan upcycling polystyrene rings you may have once loved from a supermarket bubblegum machine or an arcade prize cabinet to increase their sentimental value.
Another series of sculptures with visceral resonance includes concrete peach pieces with old engines as pits. Wild Heart it embeds a Harley-Davidson engine in a smooth, heart-shaped peach body, though that peach isn’t exactly representative. As Ryan said, “emoji is more than a production method,” yet it retains the charge of something familiar. Whether it’s a defunct Harley-Davidson engine—a symbol of American adventurism—or the soft skin of a peach cast from cold concrete, the piece is baptized in its contradictions. However, it holds together. In denying the decision, Ryan puts his subjects in a constant state of waste and want.
