Katie Ryan

A solo exhibition at CAVES, Naarm (Melbourne) with a three-part text by Amy May Stuart.

All photos by Sebastian Kainey. 

desk, door, devil is an exhibition of new sculptures and drawings by Katie Ryan that caricature a diabolical office environment. Adapting the forms of corporate furniture and desk objects such as the pendulum toy also known as the ‘executive ball clicker’ and flip calendar, the exhibition imagines the potential for absurd and sinister transformations in benign objects.

This idea is echoed in the exhibition title which charts a transition from desk to door to devil. Desk-doors — made by flipping a door 90 degrees and adding supports, are a low-cost way to create a desk — were famously adopted by Amazon as a symbol of the company's commitment to ‘frugality’. Additionally, mathematician José de Jesús Martínez has explained that a door can be a holding space for the devil: “When you push a door that’s meant to be pulled or pull a door that’s meant to be pushed, it’s a communication with the devil.”* In this analogy, the object that raises the devil is one that can’t be read accurately and the force that raises the devil is the inefficient one.

A similar logic can be applied to the executive ball clicker, which is activated with minimal effort and produces a monotonous cycle of repeated collisions. Each repetition is accented by a clean metallic click, marking the passing of time much like a metronome. This playful yet austere object demonstrates the principles of physics within a closed system and provides the owner with a sense of mastery.

desk, door, devil imagines the office environment as an insulated space of relative banality but one from which decisions ricochet outward in an endless process of cause and effect.

*Artist Michael Stevenson on José de Jesús Martínez in ‘Michael Stevenson - Cultural dope?’ (YouTube)

desk, door, devil was reviewed by Diego Ramirez for Memo Review. 

Katie Ryan’s 'desk, door, devil' is an exhibition about little people making big decisions in secluded offices... Read on here.