NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian announced its participation in TEFAF New York 2026 with a presentation of new sculptures by Kathleen Ryan. The works are the latest additions to Ryan’s Bad Fruit series (2018–), in which chunks of decomposing fruit are enlarged and embellished with swathes of gems and semiprecious stones, their rinds ripped from salvaged vehicles and granted new life.

The sculptures presented at TEFAF exemplify the dedicated process through which Ryan creates her Bad Fruit, one that harks back to the American craft tradition of pushpin-beaded fruit. Having allowed items of fresh produce to rot, the New York–based artist begins a slow process of emulation, rearticulating patches of mold in thousands of pearls, opals, and crystals, each fixed in place with a single steel pin. As is evidenced by Bad Cherries (Princess) and Bad Lime (Treasure) (both 2026), the result is an entrancing richness of color, texture, and surface tension that beautifies, in a way that is both humorous and poignant, the inevitable process of decay.

Through this act of immortalization—of freezing time in semiprecious stone—Ryan raises in a uniquely lighthearted manner the far weightier subject of life and death, thereby nodding to the art historical tradition of the vanitas. But so too does the putrefaction of the Bad Fruit speak to the throwaway culture that is prevalent under consumer capitalism. This is emphasized by Ryan’s tendency to repurpose old car parts as the rinds of her fruits, fusing the organic with such icons of automotive design as the Volkswagen Beetle (Bad Melon [Fantasy], 2026) and the Airstream trailer Bad Melon (Little Chunk & Little Baby Chunk) (2020–24). The exposed segment walls of Bad Orange (Amulet) (2026) resemble the riblike tubing of a V8 engine.

While Ryan’s incorporation of such fragments speaks to the seductions, false promises, and failings of consumerism, at the heart of her Bad Fruit is a deep affection for materials and an interest in regeneration—creative, cultural, and societal. The saclike forms of Bad Grapes (Siphon) (2026) are dehydrated to such an extent that they are becoming raisins. Picked, placed, and coated in burgundy gems that resemble grapes of a younger vintage, the work embodies the cycle of life, death, and potential rebirth that spins throughout Ryan’s practice more broadly. As with the process of bletting, in which certain fruits are allowed to overripen to the point of rotting in order to increase their sugar levels, the work isolates and celebrates the beauty, sweetness, and potential that can be found within decay. Deterioration not as an end but an evolution. Bad Fruit as an exquisite thing.