The Art Newspaper

Sweet smell of success

Will Ryman’s Icon, 2011 blooms in Frieze’s Sculpture Park

By Anny Shaw. From Frieze daily edition
Published online: 12 October 2011

Will Ryman, Icon, 2011

london. Will Ryman, the American artist and former playwright, first planted his giant pink and red roses on Park Avenue in January this year.

For Frieze, Ryman has placed a single red rose in the sculpture park; at 30ft high, it is the largest three-dimensional work he has ever made. “I am deconstructing the symbol of the rose through colour and scale,” he says. “I am taking this global symbol and its connotations of romance and beauty and changing it to represent commercialism and high art.”

Made of fibreglass and stainless steel, Icon ($650,000, Paul Kasmin Gallery, G2), 2011, recalls the bright colours and instantly recognisable forms of pop art, and has a slightly rough, handmade finish. “It’s a combination of the slick and the handmade,” Ryman says.

And it is the contrast between his exaggerated red rose, which is due to travel to the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami for a solo show in December, and the green of the park that lends the work power. “You could never compete with real trees,” Ryman says. “You’d always lose.”