With light, both photos and flowers wither away unexpectedly. We live in a vulnerable state to light, yet we live in a state that we cannot escape from light. We are gradually withering away with light. I am watching you wither away.



Ryan Ko is a Korean American artist with a studio practice based in Arizona and currently Seoul, South Korea. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

His work seeks to uncover the dialogue between time and place; between what has been and what is becoming. He blends photography and painting to explore how memory and presence coexist; how the past and its memories can awaken again through the touch of the present moment.
Photography acts as a vessel of memory; a still witness to something that once was, unaltered and enduring. Painting enters as an act of immediacy and a gesture that belongs only to now. Through each mark, he engages with what the photograph remembers, allowing color and texture to reawaken what is intangibly lost within a photograph.
In layering these two languages, a thread of memory connects with the tangible present, and reminds us that every place holds what we’ve lost, our experience, our memory, and our present moment; Every photograph we take is created through our life experiences, leading to a single moment, just as every brushstroke is born from complete attention to the present. By layering these mediums, he searches for the dialogue between what is remembered and what is felt. Each work becomes a negotiation between observation and experience, permanence and impermanence; A conversation between where we were and where we are.


Ko has displayed multimedia installations and pieces across Arizona and New Mexico, including a dual exhibition at Modified Arts in Phoenix, AZ. In 2021, his video piece "I Hope I Recognize You When I See You!" was exhibited at the CAV Gallery in Las Cruces, NM. He has exhibited in New York and London, along with and upcoming dual show In South Korea with Namu Seoul.