AGE: 35
BASED IN: Los Angeles
At first glance, one might not recognize Ryan Preciado’s artworks as portraiture—but his painstakingly crafted sculptures are imbued with the presence of many collaborators, family members, and friends he has accumulated over a lifetime. Raised in Nipomo, just south of San Luis Obispo, and now living and working in Los Angeles, his brightly lacquered objects often take inspiration from West Coast lowrider culture, or nod to his Chumash and Mexican-American lineage.
When Preciado and I met in October, he mentioned a chance encounter with a young Boyle Heights bike-shop owner just before his work was included in the Hammer Museum's 2023 "Made in L.A." biennal. The two spoke about various tools and their sculptural qualities, ultimately inspiring Preciado’s Bird in Boyle Heights, 2024, which made it into his recent fall show, “Portraits,” at New York’s Karma gallery. An oversized fastener is cast in shiny, polished bronze and set atop a green pedestal, underlining the grandeur of what would otherwise be a nondescript utilitarian instrument. “I call it a portrait because it’s a vision of him,” Preciado says, referring to the shop owner, “and the conversation we had together."
On view simultaneously at Karma was “4 x 4,” an exhibition curated by Preciado consisting strictly of four-by-four-inch works from 48 members of his community—including his grandmother, artists like rafa esparza and Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, and collaborators like Ryan Conder and Peter Shire, both mentors of the artist's who have been "generous with their knowledge."
A decade into his career, which began stint as a carpenter’s apprentice, Preciado is opening his first solo museum exhibition, “So Near, So Far,” on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum through spring 2025. The show puts Preciado’s practice in dialogue with that of Manuel Sandoval, a Nicaraguan-American woodworker whose collaborations with architectural giants like Frank Lloyd Wright are underrecognized and scantily documented. In researching the carpenter’s work, Preciado was inspired to recreate a dining set originally designed by Sandoval. Like his oeuvre as a whole, the piece is a material representation of community and lineage—an homage to one of the many people who shaped him.
