Gagosian is pleased to announce 'Roman Meal', an exhibition of two new sculptures by Kathleen Ryan at 17–19 Davies Street, London. In this, her solo debut at the gallery, Ryan mines ideas of utility and excess, luxury and repulsion, pondering culture’s inherent state of perpetual transformation while maintaining an appealing sense of the absurd. Ryan is known for her surreal interpretations of everyday objects. To date she has realized a glistening jack-o’-lantern at human scale, fashioned a delicate pearl necklace from preloved bowling balls, and pierced the trunk of a 1968 AMC Javelin with an aluminum umbrella to produce cocktail...
Gagosian is pleased to announce 'Roman Meal', an exhibition of two new sculptures by Kathleen Ryan at 17–19 Davies Street, London. In this, her solo debut at the gallery, Ryan mines ideas of utility and excess, luxury and repulsion, pondering culture’s inherent state of perpetual transformation while maintaining an appealing sense of the absurd.
Ryan is known for her surreal interpretations of everyday objects. To date she has realized a glistening jack-o’-lantern at human scale, fashioned a delicate pearl necklace from preloved bowling balls, and pierced the trunk of a 1968 AMC Javelin with an aluminum umbrella to produce cocktail garnish. Applying traditional techniques of making and ornamentation to natural and manufactured objects and materials, Ryan unites the organic and the artificial, producing tense yet self-aware meditations on desire, overabundance, and the cycle of life and death. Like one of the handwrought birds that reoccur within her practice, she plays among the ruins of late-capitalist America, gathering together both remnants of natural beauty and the emblems of overconsumption that led to this ultimate decay.
