"From the outside you have the perception that people come here and they make prints, but actually it might be print or an object — it is just about the notion of printmaking. [...] In thinking about the work I have been making at STPI, it all started with being blind and trying to nevertheless make a decision on a mark."
– Ryan Gander
Ryan Gander (b. 1976, Chester, United Kingdom, based in Suffolk, United Kingdom) creates unlikely stories that combine personal realities, fictional events and everyday phenomena. Working freely across forms and mediums, he explores how things can carry value and life beyond their outward appearances. His work encourages viewers to confront preconceived ideas about art objects, and imagine new associations and meanings that can arise from the ways these objects are presented.
Presenting a visual experience that evokes a puzzle or a prank, Gander’s work and its placement within the exhibition space often appear ad-hoc, curious and unexpected. The Trilogy (2018–2020) is a series in which animatronic mice, voiced by the artist’s daughters, discreetly emerge from small holes at the bottom of gallery walls to share innocent monologues on existential and philosophical ideas. Since 2009, the artist has also recreated Edward Degas’s famed The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (c.1880) in various iterations. Reimagined as a protagonist freed from the confines of classical sculpture, she attempts to make her own journey through the world of contemporary art.
Gander obtained his BA in Interactive Art from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1999, following which he completed his postgraduate fine art studies at the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht in 2000 and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2002. His work is held in major collections including Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Contemporary Austin; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna; Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Stiftung Kunsthalle Bern; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Tate Collection, London; and Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar.
Notable recent solo exhibitions include Grunts, hoots, whimpers, barks and screams (2024), Museo Helga de Alvear, Caćeres; The Markers of Our Time (2022), Tokyo Opera City; Nick Lodgers invites Ryan Gander (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; The 500 Million Year Collaboration (2019), Kunsthalle Bern; Faces of Picasso (2017), Remai Modern, Saskatoon; The Day-to-Day Accumulation of Hope (2017), The Contemporary Austin; and These wings aren’t for flying (2017), National Museum of Osaka. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including 3rd NGV Triennial (2023), Melbourne; Paradise Kortrijk (2021), 2nd Kortrijk Triennial; Beautiful world, where are you? (2018), 10th Liverpool Biennial; Other Places (2018), 21st Sydney Biennale; 27th Brno Biennial (2016); 9th Liverpool Biennial (2016); Between the Idea and Experience (2015), 12th Havana Biennial; L'avenir (looking forward) (2014), 8th La Biennale de Montréal; 8th Berlin Biennale (2014); Reactivation (2012), 9th Shanghai Biennale; IllumiNATIONS (2011), 54th Venice Biennale; OUR MAGIC HOUR (2011), 4th Yokohama Triennale; Screaming and Listening (2009), 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre; Revolutions – Forms that Turn (2008), 16th Sydney Biennale; and 00s (2007), 9th Lyon Biennial.
Gander had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2014, resulting in the exhibition Portrait of a blind artist obscured by flowers (2015).