Ryan Gander (born 1976) is a disabled English artist. He is a native of Chester.
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Ryan Gander is a wheelchair user with a long-term physical disability, however, he is reluctant to discuss his physical limitations in interviews with the press.[1][2] Some of his work makes reference to the fact of his disability (i.e. 2011 Venice Biennale exhibit).[3] The exhibit at Venice Biennale featured an action-figure sized sculpture of himself lying on his side with a toppled wheelchair nearby. In 2006, his installation at the old Whitechapel Library, 'Is this guilt in you too?', was part of the Art Council's 'Adjustments' exhibitions whose aim was 'to address transitional thinking on disability equality and inclusion'.[4]
Gander trained in Interactive Art at Manchester Metropolitan University receiving a First Class Degree in 1999. He then spent a year at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands as a Fine Art Research Participant before completing his post graduate studies in 2002, at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Ryan Gander was awarded the prix de rome in 2003. He was nominated for the Beck's Futures prize in 2005.
Gander's work is formally diverse and has included, "a chess set, a new word, a children's book, jewellery, customised sportswear, glass orb paperweights and maps," as well as photography, films, and drawings.[5] Considering Gander’s work, "Appendix", art critic Mark Beasley said: "It’s an unwieldy yet fascinatingly open account, somewhat like lucid dreaming, which shows the artist at his most arch, open and revealing ... an attempt to discuss practice in a form sympathetic to the work in discussion."[6]
From 2002 - 2003, early presentations of Ryan Gander's work were in the form of lectures which he delivered to the public in many venues: 'Loose Associations Lecture 1.1' and 'Loose Associations Lecture 2.1'. These encapsulated his position as an interactive artist. Gander's recent solo exhibitions include The Happy Prince for the Public Art Fund in New York, USA in 2010 and more recently Now there’s not enough of it to go around, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Ftt, Ft, Ftt, Ftt, Ffttt, Ftt, or somewhere between a modern representation of how a contemporary gesture came into being, an illustration of the physicality of an argument between Theo and Piet regarding the dynamic aspect of the diagonal line and attempting to produce a chroma-key set for a hundred cinematic scenes at Taro Nasu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan in 2011.
Gander’s works are included in both international public and private collections including Tate Collection, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum Modern Kunst, Wien; Le Fonds régional d'art contemporain du Nord Pas-de-Calais; FNAC, Paris, France; Kadist Foundation, Paris, France; MaMBO, Bologna; The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam; Arts Council, London; Welsh Museum, Cardiff; Government Art Collection, London.
“Ryan Gander is a story-teller, a teller of tales” ... “His art is an attempt to see beyond the internal art referent, to hug an idea so tightly that its innards are squeezed onto the walls” [7]
"The work of London-based artist Ryan Gander is multi-faceted, ranging through installation, sculpture, intervention, writing and performative lecturing” [8]
“Ryan Gander's practice involves a lot of playful puzzles, cultural collisions and meta-versions of reality.” [9]
“Humour underpins much of Gander’s work, rescuing it from mere 'institutional critique', engaging us with its dead-pan, self-deprecating knowingness. It is as rigorous as it is strangely, accessible.” [10]