RYAN GANDER
Born in Chester (UK) in 1976, graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1999. With the post-academic experience in Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, Netherlands), Gander participated in the artist-in-residence program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam until 2004. Subsequently, he received the honorary Doctorate of the Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Suffolk. In 2017, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to contemporary arts. In 2021, he was elected as a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Art in the UK. As a leading figure in conceptual art today, Gander if one of the prominent artists in British contemporary art. While his works take a wide variety of forms including video, sculpture, installation, and performance, they are created with a focus on conceptual formation (concept), where the narratives are interpreted or contemplated by the viewers. His works are held in the collections of art institutions worldwide. Apart from solo museum exhibitions, Gander has also participated in many major international exhibitions including “dOCUMENTA 13” (2012), the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012), and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), etc.
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Title: On slow Obliteration, or How are you still hungry
Year: 2019
Medium: flip-dot panel, powder-coated aluminium tray frame, rub-down transfer
Dimensions: 130 × 86.1 × 7.8 cm (51 1/8 x 33 7/8 x 3 in.)
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On slow Obliteration, or How are you still hungry
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Year: 2019This piece is part of a series of works titled “On Slow Obliteration, or”. It is an installation that creates an animation resembling raindrops or dewdrops falling by flipping the round dots according to a certain algorithm. The dots are around 1cm and change color on both sides like the Othello game piece. Both sides of the flip-dots in this work are silver and light gray. The silver side glows white or sinks to black depending on the current lighting conditions, which alters the perception of the depiction of flowing rain when it turns lighter or darker than the intermediate gray.
Medium: flip-dot panel, powder-coated aluminium tray frame, rub-down transfer
Dimensions: 130 × 86.1 × 7.8 cm (51 1/8 x 33 7/8 x 3 in.)
Acquired from TARO NASU, 2022
In this series, text is added to every installation work, and in this work, a list of prominent artists' names from art history is presented. Beginning with Cuno Amiet of the Pont-Avern School and ending with German artist Ull Hohn, who died young, there are almost no rules or meanings to be found in this sequence. To recognize the flickering motion of the flip dots in this work as “rain falling” or “water droplets dropping”, it is necessary to stand in front of the artwork for some time. In the meantime, viewers may occasionally glance at the text that looks like a collection list of a prominent museum, while hoping for some dramatic actions to occur. Time is an asset for many people, and to think contrarily from this viewpoint, the names listed in the text represent the acknowledged values throughout the time axis of art history, symbolizing the passage of time.