Ryan Gander
14 Mar - 02 May 2009
RYAN GANDER
It's a right Heath Robinson affair
14 March – 02 May 2009
A double exhibition in collaboration with gb agency, Paris.
gb agency and Kadist Art Foundation are pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Ryan Gander (b. 1976, lives and works in London), held simultaneously in both spaces. This “stuttering exhibition in two parts” will gather new works created by the artist during his stay at Couvent des Récollets in Paris from January to March 2009.
Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, Ryan Gander assembles seemingly disparate objects, actions and texts to develop his own narrative systems. Characterized by conceptual rigor, visual simplicity and allusive text, Ryan Gander’s works probe the processes of emergence and the mechanisms of perception entailed by the work of art. Installations, photographs, performances, publications and press inserts are his means of following up a train of thought concerning art’s discursive potential and its transmission systems. His practice, which makes extensive use of language and work with other artists, aims at “making the invisible visible” and providing the “possibility and preconditions for things to happen.”
Playing with different processes of revelation, apparition and disappearance, the works presented in his exhibition raise questions related to portraiture : how to represent or try to define someone and particularly the figure of the artist (in the broad sense of the visual artist, writer, architect, urbanist, designer, magician...), from his – real or imaginary – role in history and current society to his social representation and his private image. These concerns are also brought up through pieces particularly linked with notions of authorship, ownership and appropriation. The worlds of art – their codes and their languages – are incessantly put into perspective with characters and stories invented by the artist. Spread out over both exhibition galleries, Ryan Gander’s works provoke constant shuttles between these real and imaginary worlds, until their indetermination.
It's a right Heath Robinson affair
14 March – 02 May 2009
A double exhibition in collaboration with gb agency, Paris.
gb agency and Kadist Art Foundation are pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Ryan Gander (b. 1976, lives and works in London), held simultaneously in both spaces. This “stuttering exhibition in two parts” will gather new works created by the artist during his stay at Couvent des Récollets in Paris from January to March 2009.
Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, Ryan Gander assembles seemingly disparate objects, actions and texts to develop his own narrative systems. Characterized by conceptual rigor, visual simplicity and allusive text, Ryan Gander’s works probe the processes of emergence and the mechanisms of perception entailed by the work of art. Installations, photographs, performances, publications and press inserts are his means of following up a train of thought concerning art’s discursive potential and its transmission systems. His practice, which makes extensive use of language and work with other artists, aims at “making the invisible visible” and providing the “possibility and preconditions for things to happen.”
Playing with different processes of revelation, apparition and disappearance, the works presented in his exhibition raise questions related to portraiture : how to represent or try to define someone and particularly the figure of the artist (in the broad sense of the visual artist, writer, architect, urbanist, designer, magician...), from his – real or imaginary – role in history and current society to his social representation and his private image. These concerns are also brought up through pieces particularly linked with notions of authorship, ownership and appropriation. The worlds of art – their codes and their languages – are incessantly put into perspective with characters and stories invented by the artist. Spread out over both exhibition galleries, Ryan Gander’s works provoke constant shuttles between these real and imaginary worlds, until their indetermination.