via: ryan
Notes:
Kathleen Ryan’s artistic process transforms the familiar image of decaying fruit into sculpture that is both alluring and unsettling. In her Bad Fruit series, she carves polystyrene forms and covers their surfaces with manufactured beads and semiprecious stones, using ordinary materials for fresh skin and gemstones for mold and decay. This reversal is the strongest conceptual element of her process: materials associated with beauty and value represent something we usually discard. Her sculptures invite viewers to reconsider how appearance shapes their judgments about worth, deterioration, and desire. Gagosian Quarterly
Through color, texture, and scale, Ryan gives this contradiction a convincing visual presence. Smooth, orderly passages of beads contrast with irregular clusters of stones, creating shifts in rhythm that suggest mold spreading across the fruit. Her process includes observing actual fruit as it deteriorates, grounding the sculptures’ elaborate surfaces in natural change. ICA SF The enlarged forms encourage viewers to move between recognizing the whole object and examining its individual components. I find this relationship especially effective because the surface rewards close attention while preserving the discomfort of encountering spoiled food.
What makes Ryan’s process compelling is the tension between patient construction and physical breakdown. Each bead is attached by hand, allowing sustained labor to give durable form to a fleeting condition. Gagosian Quarterly At times, the gemstones’ visual richness risks making decay feel too decorative, allowing viewers to enjoy the spectacle without confronting its unease. Yet that risk also strengthens the work’s central question: why can we admire deterioration when it appears luxurious? Ryan’s sculptures are most successful when attraction and repulsion remain unresolved, turning meticulous craftsmanship into a thoughtful examination of beauty, consumption, and time.
- RJG//AI