Los Angeles—An oversized sculpture of a berry constructed in part with gemstones is on display in artist Kathleen Ryan’s “Souvenir” exhibition at the Karma gallery in Los Angeles.
The piece, titled “Dreamhouse,” depicts a rotting raspberry with its still-good flesh made of magenta plastic beads and its moldy bits composed of blue and green gemstones such as lapis lazuli, malachite, and turquoise.
Its receptacle is hollow, resembling a cave with glittering crystal stalactites and stalagmites.
“Dreamhouse” is made with malachite, 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. (Image credit: Lance Brewer)
The piece took three years to make, the gallery said, and it is the first raspberry to appear in Ryan’s “Bad Fruit” series, which began in 2018.
The series features large fruit sculptures—including oranges, melons, and grapes—encrusted with glass and acrylic beads and semiprecious gemstones, resembling size-distorted mid-century-era pushpin fruit.
A single lemon contains 10,000 beads and stones, Ryan said in a 2019 interview with the New York Times’ T Magazine about her process.
The vanitas-inspired works are a comment on, among other things, worldly excess.
“They’re not just opulent, there’s an inherent sense of decline built into them … which is also something that’s happening in the world: The economy is inflating, but so is wealth inequality, all at the expense of the environment,” Ryan said in the interview.
“Though the mold is the decay,” she said, “it’s the most alive part.”
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Other non-fruit works rendered in stones and beads arranged to map states of decay are also on display in the exhibition.
Two roughly 7-foot sculptures leaning against the wall appear simultaneously as discarded mattresses and huge slices of bread.
“Sunset Strip” features mold blooms in the shape of clouds, while “Starstruck” appears burnt, almost overtaken in full by decay.
“Sunset Strip” is made of amethyst, rose quartz, agate, calcite, chalcedony, kyanite, celestite, stilbite, apophyllite, aquamarine, rhodonite, sodalite, quartz, cherry quartz, glass, acrylic, and aluminum and steel pins on coated polystyrene. (Image credit: Lance Brewer)
“Starstruck” consists of agate, tektite, obsidian, amethyst, amber, pyrite, hematite, lapis lazuli, lava rock, black kyanite, smoky quartz, garnet, carnelian, jasper, tiger eye, wood, glass, acrylic, and aluminum and steel pins on coated polystyrene. (Image credit: Lance Brewer)
Alongside the gemstone-studded sculptures, the exhibition also features a set of oversized rings centering “gems” made of bowling balls and faceted glass surrounded by a halo of soda cans.
They have bands scaled to a human waist rather than a finger and resemble the plastic toy favors a child might bring home from a princess-themed party, the gallery said.
Karma notes that jewelry as form and a “symbolically loaded object” is one of Ryan’s longtime motifs.
At left, “Sweet Nothings” and “Heavy Heart” (Image credit: Jeff McLane) and at right, “Show Pony” (Image credit: Lance Brewer)
In “Show Pony,” “Heavy Heart,” and “Sweet Nothings,” the sculptor “teases out jewelry’s sentimental values as stand-ins for devotion, taste, or generational ties,” the gallery said, upending them through plays of scale and material.
The set of rings is one of two new bodies of work that debuted in “Souvenir.” The other is a trio of cast-concrete peaches—”Heartbreaker,” “Heartthrob,” and “Wild Heart”—with their pits supplanted by engines.
Ryan was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1984. Today, she lives and works in New Jersey.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, in 2006 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California in Los Angeles in 2014.
Her work has been collected by institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
In 2024, she was selected for global representation by Gagosian, and her debut exhibition with the gallery is scheduled for 2026.
“Souvenir” contains nine sculptures in total.
It is open from Nov. 8 to Dec. 20 at Karma, located at 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
More information can be found on the Karma website.