A landscape of small plastic toys spreads across the gallery space. You can see figurines, turrets and animals standing in rows, one behind the other in vertical lines. This floor work does not convey peace; it is too heterogeneous and too colorful for that. While people are still trying to figure out this riddle of chaos and order, Ryan Gander comes around the corner and says there is no logic in the system.
The exhibition that the artist, who was born in Chester, England, in 1976, set up in the Esther Schipper Gallery is about sensory overload, distraction and the hunt for ever stronger stimuli in the age of social media. It is the most personal exhibition he has ever done, says Gander. His feeling about it: a little cringe.
Portrait of the son
Gander is an internationally successful conceptual artist working in all media. Sometimes he makes sculptures out of steel or marble, then an animatronic mouse that philosophizes about life. He gives lectures, writes poetry and creates art with various alter egos. At Esther Schipper he is now showing conceptual portraits of himself and his son Baxter, who was diagnosed with autism a few years ago. It’s not about him, but about universal issues, says Gander. He hates identity politics, probably because others often project it onto him as a person in a wheelchair.
The AI-controlled work “Ryan Waiting” shows a digital avatar of the artist moving in a gray, horizonless area. On the wall hangs a horizontal picture several meters long, printed in a grid on 1,500 postcards. It is a portrait of his son Baxter. “Because Baxter is constantly moving, I couldn’t create a static sculpture of him like I did with my daughters,” says Gander. Instead, he took a 20-second scan of the child, turned the shot into a marble sculpture, printed it out as a photo, and dismantled it into 1,500 pieces. “It’s very close to Baxter,” says Gander.
Toys in a row
The toy work on the floor is a symbol of the relationship between father and son, who have completely different perceptions. Ryan Gander, whose world development works through language and who doesn’t walk, and Baxter, who doesn’t use language but acts very physically. Baxter sets up the toys at home in exactly the same way as he did here in the gallery, says Gander. He doesn’t try to understand Baxter’s perception of the world, but simply accept it. Apparently Gander is practicing letting go. On the one hand, he gives away his unrealized artistic ideas to the audience via a vending machine, and on the other hand, he immortalizes himself in digital space in “Ryan Waiting”.
The gallery is promoting the exhibition by saying that Gander is working with artificial intelligence and virtual reality technology for the first time. VR overwhelming cinema is not exactly what he wants to offer the world. He uses the unlimited possibilities of VR in a kind of reverse mode.
What he has done above all for his VR work is to stay still for a long time. For “Ryan Waiting,” which can be experienced in the gallery as a multi-channel video installation and with a VR headset, Gander sat there doing nothing for many hours – and didn’t do much except look, blink, move around the room, whatever doing while doing nothing.
100 years of life
Gander’s body movements were filmed using motion capture and a 3D model was created. The artist’s avatar will live in this animation for a hundred years from the opening of the exhibition, whether anyone is watching or not, his movements and his mood will change, controlled by an algorithm that processes data on the time of day, climate and Gander’s relevance in the art world. Even though the real Ryan Gander is long dead, he remains his virtual legacy.
An essential part of the work consists of legal contracts that determine how the whole thing is to be kept running. It is an elaborate and at the same time contemplative homage to boredom, to the uneventful state that is needed to generate new ideas. And of course it is also a reminder that your life is running out and that you should think carefully about how you fill it.
Gander provides his viewers with various options to look at their own distraction strategies and how to deal with time. As an artist, he is part of the attention economy, wants to be seen, craves likes and clicks and new content on social media.
He put the fear of succumbing to this into another job. Another image of himself. It lies in the corner and calls itself “Little Stink”, an animatronic Ryan Gander puppet, the bad version of himself, lying lazily and making art for vain reasons. It has become a moving exhibition that deals with personal matters in a subtle way. And no, it’s not cringe.