Ryan Gander (Installation View), via Lisson Gallery

The passage of time is at the center of artist Ryan Gander’s current solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery’s 67 Lisson location in London.  Marking the artist’s sixth solo show with the gallery, Gander’s show has pulled a particularly simple, yet tellingly even-handed quote from his father as the inspiration for the show: “let the world take a turn.”  Taking his father’s words to heart, Gander encourages spectatorship, welcoming the viewer to allow time to take its course within the gallery, and to allow it to work its healing, transformational capabilities to work throughout the show.

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Ryan Gander, I Be… (x) (2016), via Art Observed

Ryan Gander has opened his first exhibition at Lisson Gallery’s new New York City outpost, spreading his work through a small but tightly selected body of pieces underlining the artist’s enigmatic material interests in play with his uniquely British sense of humor.  In one corner, a piece called I’m never coming back to New York shows a £20 note slowly twisting and pushing its way out of a hole in the wall, playing on dual jokes about fleshing out new coats of plaster with crumpled paper and the commercial core of the gallery environment.

Ryan Gander, Mr. Modern Classical Conceptualist (Dramaturgical framework for structure and stability) (2016), via Art Observed

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Ryan Gander, Night and Day (2015), via Lisson Gallery

Artist Ryan Gander has returned to Lisson Gallery in London for his third show with the gallery this month, furthering his uniquely witty work with conventional art materials, and their intersections with the objects of the everyday, compounded by the artist’s often ingenious mechanical and technological interjections.

Ryan Gander, Fieldwork (Installation View), via Lisson Gallery (more…)

Recognized contemporary artists Ryan Gander and Cory Arcangel have both announced the launch of their own lines of clothing.  Gander’s line is a collaboration with Japanese clothing line A.Four Labs, while Arcangel’s, titled “Arcangel Surfwear” is “all designed for comfortably surfing…. the web of course,” says a project manager. (more…)

Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012, All images courtesy Palais de Tokyo

Ryan Gander‘s Esperluette, the first exhibition in the Palais de Tokyo‘s series “biboliothèque d’artiste,” explores and interprets the concept of the ampersand (&) as a symbol of the network of connections made by the human mind when solving a puzzle. Through a variety of images of everyday objects, sound installations, and books, Gander invites viewers to create their own stories based on the reactions and associations which occur in their own minds.

Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012

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Adrian Searle interviews artist Ryan Gander in the first of a series of artist interviews for The Guardian. Gander discusses his new works: a cast sculpture that resembles marble of his daughter’s secret fort, and a carved bureau that is conceptually about collisions between objects. He discusses his approach to making art in general, which relies on careful observation and the acknowledgement that everything is absurd: “It’s just being interested in the world. It’s enjoying keeping your eyes open and your wits about you.” (more…)

Ryan Gander – The Fallout of Living (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

The work of Ryan Gander is an exercise in polysemy.  The British sculptor continually explores concepts of loose association and interaction in his work, combining disparate elements to form complex relational narratives. Working in a diverse range of media that includes found objects, plexiglass, wood and marble, his pieces blend intimate symbolism with common artifacts, creating pieces rich in interpretive significance on any number of planes.

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Fridericianum in Kassel via dOCUMENTA

Every five years, the city of Kassel in Germany plays host to dOCUMENTA, a colossal, 100-day long exhibition of contemporary art from all over the world.  Participating artists are provided at least two years to complete their work and the results are thus consistently thorough and complex.  This year is dOCUMENTA’s thirteenth edition and is expected to attract more than 750,000 visitors, nearly twice that of last year’s Venice Biennale.

Yan Lei‘s  “Limited Art Project”, a room of works completed daily over the past year.  The room and the art hung on its walls will be sprayed over with car paint, retransforming every piece into a blank canvas.  This image is featured on BBC News’ Big Picture series.

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Ryan Gander’s Locked Room Scenario. All pictures for Art Observed on site by Caroline Claisse.

British artist Ryan Gander‘s Locked Room Scenario is set in the mysterious Londonnewcastle Depot in north London. Every detail, from postcards and notes left throughout the scene, to teenage actors sitting on the stoop, create an intriguing, paranoia-inducing installation. Walking past locked rooms and peering through windows of a seemingly closed exhibition, the viewer is frustrated, left wanting more. Indeed, “the crime scene” reaches an intolerable suspense as the public must decipher the art within and the possible meaning thereof. Gander’s game plays with imagination and paranoia, creating an experience of total immersion, leaving the viewer second-guessing everything and everyone involved.

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Move over vaporetti — there’s a new barge in town. Slated to gracing the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice over the past five days was a project by The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, entitled “Commercial Break.” The exhibition is organized by Neville Wakefield, a contemporary art writer prolific curator globally. Powered by POST Magazine, “Commercial Break” considers itself to be a provocative architectural intervention in a city where no advertising is traditionally displayed. Unfortunately, as Artinfo reported, the city pulled permits a few days before and the videos were instead screened at the project’s Bauer Hotel party. The woman behind the “GCCC” is Dasha Zukhova, girlfriend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich; it is the institution’s second project in Venice.  All videos are now viewable on the exhibition’s website.

Among videos featured is one by  Richard Phillips, starring Lindsey Lohan.

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