The Practice

Ryan Cronin has never waited for permission to make work. What follows is a selection of highlights from thirty years of sustained artistic practice — public installations, international residencies, brand collaborations, and guerrilla interventions — each one a chapter in a body of work built by an artist who has always moved forward on his own terms.

The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Sinthian, Senegal

In September 2019, Ryan Cronin spent thirty days at Thread Artists Residency and Cultural Center in Sinthian, Senegal — made possible through the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. For the first time since college, he had uninterrupted time to work. No family obligations. No community commitments. No daily responsibilities. Just him and the work. He arrived with pre-cut plywood panels in his checked luggage, a bag of lacrosse sticks, and decades of practice. What followed didn't change who he was as an artist — it deepened it in ways that only uninterrupted time can.

See what thirty days of uninterrupted practice unlocked →

The Spaceship

Some works survive. Some don't. In 2011, Ryan Cronin spent six weeks constructing a spaceship from raw material and pure compulsion — no commission, no gallery — and installed it at NADA Hudson alongside some of the most compelling voices in contemporary art. Two years later, Hurricane Sandy took it.

See what it took to make it →

The Fabergé Big Egg Hunt NYC

In 2014, Ryan Cronin was invited to transform a large-scale egg sculpture for the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt NYC — a citywide public art installation featuring over 260 works by artists including Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, and Peter Beard. His egg landed at Rockefeller Center. It was unmistakably his.

See the work →

WYNWOOD, MIAMI

During Art Basel 2012, Ryan Cronin was handed a wall in Wynwood, Miami — then the most watched neighborhood in the contemporary art world — and spent a week painting live as collectors, curators, and gallerists from around the globe walked by. Rust-Oleum sent the paint. Kohn Commercial Real Estate opened the door. The rest was Cronin.

See the work →

Hudson Whiskey, Tuthilltown Spirits

In the summer of 2013, Ryan Cronin spent a week painting by hand across 69 feet of curved metal — 17 feet in the air — at Tuthilltown Spirits, New York's first whiskey distillery since Prohibition. His two fellow artists used spray and finished in under 78 hours. Cronin painted every inch by hand.

PAST PARTNERSHIPS + COLLABORATIONS