SAN FRANCISCO — Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan, currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco’s new downtown location, is a small show that packs a big visual punch. Easily visible to passersby outside, Ryan’s large, blingy sculptures of rotting fruit are both semaphores and sirens, warning of our cultural ruin while beckoning us to come closer. The pieces, which include jewel-encrusted giant lemons sprouting semiprecious mold, along with salvaged car parts as cocktail garnish, are uncomfortably likable. They are pretty, familiar, fun — and fecund with decay.
Ryan’s artworks are part of the western still life tradition of inserting dark memento mori within a work’s lovely visual bounty, but hers are very much in the key of California. Imagine Rachel Ruysch, a Dutch Golden Age flower painter (who headlines a Toledo Museum of Art show this spring), but in Ryan’s case born and educated in modern-day SoCal, specifically Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Pop Art meets Old Master, as if Claes Oldenberg suddenly found his eternal soul.
The result is a beach umbrella spearing an automotive cocktail wedge, a shimmering lemon and glistening cherry, a sense of sun and sand and outsized pleasures. There’s Hollywood glitz too: semi-precious stones and crystals and colored beads, a glittery surface delight that also spells nature’s inevitable decay. It’s a poignant reminder of what is happening right now in Southern California, as multimillion dollar homes go up in sudden flames.
Ryan’s work is also an indictment. Far from being repelled by the effluvia of decay across their sparkly surface, much less any quasi-Christian pang of life’s limited timeframe, I find myself entranced by their beguiling shine. It’s a quandary akin to American life itself. We might loathe capitalism and its destructive urges, but somewhere there is the disturbing, insistent hum that, well, maybe diamonds really are a girl’s best friend. Or at very least a delightful distraction.
Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan is a show that invites interaction with the city outside, a place battling its own brand of California cool meets corrosion. ICA SF’s move in October last year from the Dogpatch neighborhood on the city’s far east side to the heart of downtown is part of revitalizing a once-vibrant center of art and activity. A non-collecting museum dedicated to connecting the broader community with contemporary art, ICA SF’s presence downtown goes a long way toward make art relevant for everyone. It’s always free, for one thing, and in addition to artworks, it offers coloring book pages — one picturing Ryan’s “Screwdriver” is currently available free of charge — as well as curated books to browse, book lists coordinated with the San Francisco Public Library, and a teen program that enables young people to engage with current shows. I wonder what they make of Ryan’s art? My guess is that they get it easily, because they live it every day in a place where both beauty and entropy are all around them.
16.5 x 17 x 14 inches (41.91 x 43.18 x 35.56 cm); Private Collection
Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan continues at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (35 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California) through March 16. The exhibition was curated by Ali Gass, executive director and chief curator, ICA SF.
