Introduction

The art of Ryan Gander calls for his audience to be highly curious, playful and intellectually flexible. His works are visually surprising and attractive and entice the audience to investigate the reason for their allure. By striving to get to the bottom, the viewer gets drawn into a vortex of humorous or serious associations, references and visual or linguistic innuendos that lead into a labyrinth with no end or exit. Rhetorical or formal wit serves as bait, and by engaging further one enters an eerie game of uncertainties and relativizations. Ryan Gander takes his penchant for deconstruction and recombination to extremes and penetrates all aspects of the world, practically the whole spectrum from personal and familiar experiences to the work of his artist colleagues and friends, from art historical references to social and everyday phenomena.