Ryan Flores’ ceramic sculptures, tableaux and wall works float between seduction and repulsion, drawing the viewer in with the promise of bounty and sustenance before offering rot, decay, and spoil in equal measure. Close looking at Flores’ arrays of withering produce reveal the artist’s command of material; glazes interact, crackling and oozing over and into one another as multiple firings approximate the processes of cellular death inherent to food spoilage. Thematically and formally linked to traditions of still-life painting as carriers of coded meaning, Flores’ works become frozen in colliding moments of transformation: flatness becomes bodily and dimensional, rind and flesh begin to putrefy, and beauty slumps toward threat.

Ryan Flores (b. 1986, Los Angeles) received a BFA in Ceramics from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent one and two-person exhibitions include Rising from the Garden, at Frieze Los Angeles, The Fool and the Snuffler at Sow & Tailor, The Fruit Vendor at Moskowitz Bayse in Los Angeles, and Low lifes: An Upside Down Love Letter at Rockefeller Center in New York, presented by the Art Production Fund’s Art in Focus initiative. Recent group exhibitions include Clay Pop, at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles and New York, Wayfinder at the Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, and Shelf Life at Marlborough Gallery in London. He has participated in residencies such as Lighthouse Works and Vermont Studio Center, where he received the Harpo Foundation Native American Residency Fellowship. He lives and works in Los Angeles.