Does it exactly mean nothing when things that people think are meaningless?

Since inviting things can be created, why should rotten things not be worth making?

Recently, the latest collection of rotten fruits by Sculpture Artist Kathleen Ryan are on show at the Karma Gallery in New York -including cherries, lemons, and Halloween pumpkins.

The giant bad fruit is covered with organically grown mold and rotting skin studded with glass beads and gems (freshwater pearls, turquoise, rose quartz, amber, pink opal, and amethyst). Usually, Ryan prefers to use precious, shiny stones to show decay and ordinary glass beads to represent the original parts of the fruit.

Kathleen Ryan

The Los Angeles artist

Web：www.kathleen-ryan.com

ins：katieryankatieryan


Artist Kathleen Ryan is an artist from New York, USA. She studied studio art and anthropology at Pitzer College and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from UCLA. Undertaken extensive artistic practices by the young artist, the Bad Fruit series, one of the most eye-catching pieces in her oeuvre, has garnered numerous exhibitions. She uses precious and semi-precious stones to cover the surface of large fruit models to create jeweled fruits of enormous size.


-01- Bad Cherries

Sculpture Artist Kathleen Ryan challenges the conventional aesthetics that these fruits are not the freshest images in people's minds instead coated with mold. Her project is called Bad Fruit.

Today we are going to share with you some new artworks from Bad Fruit. Besides lemons, she also created cherries, pumpkins, watermelons, grapes, and more fruits.

Kathleen Ryan says the sculptures have a beautiful and joyful look, as well as ugly and unsettling.

Bad cherries, 2021

Bad cherries, 2021(details)

The rotting fruit displays rich variations of color, which marries with dozens of precious and semi-precious stones by Kathleen Ryan: Amazon stone, agate, quartz, rose quartz, turquoise, jade, jasper, serpentine, smoky quartz, olive jade, fluorite, amethyst, tree agate, Russian serpentine, marble, emerald, abalone shell, coral, freshwater pearl.

Bad cherries with daisy chain, 2021

Bad cherries, 2021(details)

Kathleen Ryan comments on the culture of excess consumption with her collection Rotten, oversized fruit sculptures. These fragments transform discarded and rotting fruits into beautifully sophisticated artworks using a styrofoam base and beads from countless carved precious or semi-precious stones.


-02- Bad lemon (sea witch)


Bad lemon (sea witch)


Bad lemon (armadillo), 2021

To make the fruit, Ryan starts with a large polystyrene base 28 inches wide. First, the artists make some patterns using paint to show which part of a lemon or peach will decay. Next, Pierce the foam with steel spikes, pinning down a row of gems. From pale freshwater pearls to dark-green serpentine, these beads subtly impersonate the rotting flesh of the fruit.


-03- Jackie

Jackie, 2021


-04- Bad Fruits Basket

People always search for meaning and value in things, including art, but is that necessary? Artists depicted bizarre, seemingly meaningless objects with exquisite materials to express questions and satires about values, desires, and meanings.

 

Other Artworks

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Here is a comment from a netizen: Microorganisms do not think they are beautiful or not, and it is only a natural process for decay. Don't people always say that nature is beautiful? Alas, humans, only accept flowers bloom but not flowers fade?

What do you think of these sculptures?