Kathleen Ryan

Kathleen Ryan (b. 1984, Los Angeles, US) lives and works in  New York, US. After studying archaeology and art as an undergraduate at Pitzer College, Ryan pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied under artists Charles Ray and Catherine Opie.

Insistent on their physicality, Ryan’s sculptures recast found and handmade objects as spectacular, larger-than-life hieroglyphs of Americana. Her mediums, which range from bowling balls to a deconstructed Airstream camper, are both familiar and iconographic and seemingly lost in time. These materials are often at odds with the subjects they represent: delicate, sensual grapes are rendered with heavy, utilitarian concrete, and mould colonies are composed of semi-precious gemstones. As in Dutchvanitaspaintings, the relics of the everyday—seed pods, jewellery, domestic fixtures, mouldy fruit—become tongue-in-cheek allegories for sexuality, decadence, and the cycle of life.

Her work is held in public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; Cc Foundation and Art Centre, Shanghai, China; Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.