A new Ryan Gander exhibition tis o take place at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, this autumn from 28 September 2012 to 7 January 2013. This is part of the Palais de Tokyo’s recurring programme Bibliothèques d’artiste, which invites artists to display the implicit connections in their mental universe.
Gander, whose current exhibition continues at Lisson Gallery, London, until 24 August 2012. The Paris exhibition will inaugurate the programme with the installation Ampersand (2012) – the English word for “esperluette”. Coinciding with the show at the Palais de Tokyo, Gander will also release the book Ampersand – Notes on a Collection, to be published September 2012 by Dent-De-Leone, London.
Ampersand presents the viewer with a giant white cube, closed and impenetrable. A small opening permits the viewer to stealthily observe a scrolling series of objects on a conveyor belt. These objects taken from everyday life, ordinary and insignificant, come from Ryan Gander’s personal collection. A total of more than 60 elements are presented, including Albers Fire Bricks and French Roof Tiles, An Amazon Box, Jobs’ Keyboard, a Leica M9, Smoked Vodka, Sound Effect Props, Spray Paint and a Stab Vest amongst other diverse paraphernalia.
The installation recalls cinematic experience, with the effect of each object dependent on its relative position in the sequence. Each sequence unfolds like an episode in a story running non-stop. Movements, scrollings, changes of viewpoint: all the tricks of editing and staging are thus brought into play. Taken as a whole, the slide show of objects invites the viewer to reconstruct Gander’s curious collection of objects while envisaging their significance, be it cultural, historical, financial, or personal.
In addition to Ampersand, Gander will show several other bodies of work. These include four ‘ghost templates’, part of a series of works of which several are currently on display at Lisson Gallery. The works in the exhibition are all based on a system with multiple references, a puzzle. The sound installation, self-service posters, and central installation all form fragments of a framed story. Gander has long been fascinated with the association of ideas, as in the cycle of lecture-performances he has been developing since 2002, entitled Loose Associations.
Ryan Gander (b. 1976) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Ryan Gander: Lost in my own recursive narrative, Fondazione Morra Greco, Napoli (2012); An exercise in cultural semaphore, gb agency, Paris (2012); Intervals, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011); The Happy Prince, Public Art Fund, Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, New York and Attempting to remain light on ones feet: Work from Daiwa Collection’, Okinawa Prefectural Museum, Okinawa (2011).
Gander is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery, London, from 11 July – 24 August 2012 and also a forthcoming solo exhibition at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, from 18 August 2012. In 2011, Gander was commissioned by Artangel to create Locked Room Scenario. In the same year he was included in ‘Becks Futures’ and won the Baloise Art Statement Prize at Art Basel.
“Esperluette” 28 September 2012 — 07 January 2013 Palais de Tokyo, Paris