MARK RYDEN

Early Years

Mark Ryden was born in Medford, Oregon in 1963, but raised in southern California. His father restored and customised cars. As a child, Ryden liked painting with poster paint, copying images he’d seen in magazines and creating collages. Ryden received his BFA from the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena in 1987. For a decade following graduation, he worked as a commercial artist, designing album covers—including Michael Jackson’s Dangerous (1991) and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ One Hot Minute (1995)—and book covers including Stephen King’s Desperation (1996) and its companion novel The Regulators (1996), published under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman (placing the books together made a single picture).

Mark Ryden: Artworks

Ryden’s fairytale-esque world and large-headed, cherubic, doll-like figures may summon up ideas of childhood, but the addition of human innards and cuts of raw meat give his paintings a more sinister twist. Painting in oil, he uses a traditional technique that incorporates layers of subtle glazes, giving his works depth. Ornate, baroque frames also give his pieces a a historical appearance.

• Mark Ryden’s debut solo show in Pasadena in 1998 was called The Meat Show and meat is a recurring theme in the artist’s work, which often considers the disconnect in modern society between the meat we eat and the creatures from which it comes. “For me, it’s a bridge between physical and spiritual,” he told the New York Times in 2014. “What keeps our spirit in this world is our meat.” Works in that 1998 show included The Angel of Meat (1998), a crucifix-framed oil work in which a winged girl floats above a field containing a bull, while cuts of meat are suspended around her. In 2009, he painted Incarnation, one of his doll-like figures in an opulent garden wearing a dress made of meat. Lady Gaga wore a meat dress at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010, a year later—Ryden said to the New York Times in 2014: “It’s flattering to be the inspiration for another creative person.”
• During the 1920s, the phrase “The Gay 90s” referred to utopian depictions of American life during the 1890s. Ryden’s 2010 show The Gay 90s Olde Tyme Art Show featured paintings and drawings including The Piano Man (#94) (2010) in which a Christ-like figure plays a pink grand piano while three cherubic figures lie on its lid and Pink Lincoln (2010), in which the former president is contained within a frame featuring fruit, insects and faces. Ryden continued the theme with The Gay 90s: West in 2014, which coincided with an album featuring stars including Katy Perry and Tyler the Creator making versions of the 1892 song Daisy Bell (“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do”).
• Eye Am #181 (2024) and Eye Am Too #182 (2025) both focus on sweet potatoes—in the first picture, the yam lies on a bed, its single wide eye staring at the title of the painting, written in the space above his body. The second artwork sees another single-eyed yam, this time floating in a dreamscape. Ornate, bejewelled frames give both artworks a feeling of permanence.

Mark Ryden: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Eye Am, Perrotin Gallery, Los Angeles (2025)
• Animal Secrets, Perrotin Gallery, Paris (2022)
• Yakalina 9, Perrotin Gallery, Tokyo (2022)
• Pink Pop—Ryden x Barbie, Kasmin Gallery Pop Up, Los Angeles (2022)
• Anima Animals, Perrotin Gallery , Shanghai (2020)
• The Art of Whipped Cream, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City (2017)
• Camara de las maravillas, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (2016)
• Diversaform, Hidari Zingaro Gallery, Tokyo (2016)
• Dodecahedron, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City (2015)
• The Gay 90s: West, Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2014)
• The Gay 90s Olde Tyme Art Show, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City (2010)
• The Snow Yak Show, Tomio Koyama Gallery , Tokyo (2009)
• The Tree Show, Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2007)
• Wondertoonel, Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2004) (and touring)
• Blood, Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles (2003)
• Insalata Mista, Mondo Bizzarro Gallery, Bologna (2003)
• Bunnies and Bees, Earl McGrath Gallery, New York City (2001) (and touring)
• Amalgamation, Outre Gallery, Melbourne (2001)
• The Meat Show, Mendenhall Gallery, Pasadena (1998)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Toys As Art, Art Inspired By Toys, Mattel’s 80th Anniversary Group Exhibition, Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles (2025)
• I’d Love to See You: Juxtapoz Anniversary Works on Paper Show, Rusha and Co., Los Angeles (2024)
• The New Classic of Mountains and Seas: Contemporary Art on Chinese Original Myths and Legends, Zhejiang Art Museum (2020)
• Michael Jackson on the Wall, National Portrait Gallery, London (2018)
• Lowbrow Insurgence: The Rise of Post-Pop Art, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos (2014)
• Naked, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City (2009)
• El rey de la casa, Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (2009)
• Au Pays de Merveilles, Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris (2005)
• Hello, PressPop Gallery, Tokyo (2002)
• Six Forms of Love and Despair, Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles (1999)
• The Secret Society of Dog Art, Random Gallery, Los Angeles (1997)
• Side Show, Tamara Bane Gallery, Los Angeles (1994)

Further Reading

• Mark Ryden’s official website
• Artist profile page at Perrotin
• Mark Ryden’s Instagram
• 2014 interview in Interview magazine

Mark Ryden FAQs

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