RYAN GANDER

– Ryan Gander, June 2021

Ryan Gander‘s new exhibition for Lisson Gallery explores the relationship between our evolutionary past and theways in which we live today in societies driven by capitalist growth, speed and progress. The exhibition raisespertinent questions; how would the world look if humans had not learnt to count? How do we place value on timein a 24/7 world that demands our constant attention? Included in the exhibition is a major new animatronicinstallation, a new series of figurative bronze sculptures, several poetic and typographic compositions etched intosteel plates, and an over-animated documentary, originally made for the BBC–all speaking to notions of the Selfand the dramaturgical nature of the masks we choose to wear, and the masks that choose to wear us.

Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter a wall of transparent lockers containing personal effects, acorporate-looking office desk with an electric floor fan, and a digital wall clock. At second glance, all is not as itfirst appears. The contents of nine of the lockers are duplicated, each replicated and identically arranged acrosstwo units. The wall clock merges two displays into a single object, diverging at odd angles, creating an effect ofdouble-vision. A strong odour of damp and urine emanates from behind the office desk, blown by the whirringfan. Slumped beneath the desktop is a life-size female gorilla. Seemingly timid, she displays a desire to learn,using fingers to notate units. The purpose of her act of recording, whether units of time, currency or anaccumulation or decline of another quantity, remains unclear.

In the front and side galleries are works from a new series:Know not your place in the world (2023). Two life-size bronze figurative sculptures of the artist’s eldest and middle children are dressed up in an amalgamation ofclothes, costumes and props of their own choosing, as opposed to garments suggested by function or socialconvention. Their gaze is fixed on a mask painted in matt and gloss colours, positioned on the floor at their feet.The sculptures relate to Gander’s investigations into ‘play’ and ‘make-believe’ as catalysts for creativity, nomatter your age. This new body of work has expanded from a forthcoming permanent public commission forElephant Park in the London Borough of Southwark, conceived and developed with the local community.

Screened in the lower floor gallery is Only a matter of time (2020), a reworked documentary exploring ouridentity in the age of information, rapid technological advancement and attention economy. Through looking at anumber of contemporary practices of self-fashioning and -preservation, from self-broadcasting to millions offollowers on social media to cryogenically freezing the dead for the future, Gander considers how the enduringquestion–who are we?–is radically redefined in the 21st century, and whether the idea of our actual selves cankeep up with the technology that enables it. Gander revisits the documentary for the gallery context, over-annotating and -animating it so that every time he appears on screen, his face is obscured by a different mask.Each mask takes its style from an abstracted face featured in work by Pablo Picasso–a connection to Gander’swork in the 2017 exhibition Faces of Picasso: The Collection Selected by Ryan Gander at Remai Modern,Saskatoon, Canada.

Displayed throughout the exhibition are steel plates bearing Gander’s poetic and typographic compositions.Everyday. You’re my best machine...__(Ee Ouw Arh...) (2023) presents the first sounds humans learnt to make50,000 years ago. Elsewhere in the show, a stainless steel door features a sculptural bas-relief depicting language in multiple registers, from official signage to informal markings and graffiti, as found on a door encountered byGander and referenced in the work’s title (Temporal Departures (37 St James St South, Manchester), (2023).Following fabrication, a spell is cast onto the sculpture by the artist, transforming it into a magic portal with thepotential–dependent on the viewers imaginative and cognitive abilities–to transport one to a desired alternateplace and time.