Kathleen Ryan (b. 1984, Santa Monica, California) recasts found and handmade objects as spectacular, larger-than-life meditations on consumer society, desire, and the fine line between kitsch and class. These materials are often at odds with the subjects they represent: delicate, sensual grapes are rendered with heavy, utilitarian concrete; mold colonies are composed of semiprecious gemstones. As in Dutch Vanitas paintings, the relics of the everyday—seed pods, jewelry, domestic fixtures, moldy fruit—become tongue-in-cheek allegories for sexuality, decadence, and the cycle of life. Ryan lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Ryan has had solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2024); Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2023); François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2023, 2020, 2017); Karma, New York (2023, 2021); New Art Gallery, Walsall, United Kingdom (2019); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2019); and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2017). Her work is held in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; LAM Museum, Lisse, Netherlands; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, among others.