Mark Ryden
Selected Works
Selected Exhibitions
Selected Press
Reality and fantasy don’t collide in Mark Ryden’s art so much as they are equal halves of a more natural and dreamlike world.
Mark Ryden is on something of a sugar high. Backstage at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the painter giddily navigates a luscious candyland of his own creation — something he’s now seeing fully realized, onstage, for the first time.
A Viennese pastry shop, dancing sweets, a little boy who overindulges and a revolution by the lower pastry orders. An almost unknown Richard Strauss score. Décor and costumes by the pop-surrealist artist Mark Ryden. And a great title: “‘Whipped Cream’! It’s really wonderful,” Alexei Ratmansky said of his full-length work for American Ballet Theater after a long day of rehearsal last week.
About the Artist
Mark Ryden came to preeminence in the 1990’s during a time when many artists, critics and collectors were quietly championing a return to the art of painting. With his masterful technique and disquieting content, Ryden quickly became one of the leaders of this movement on the West Coast.
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