Ryan Gander

Turquoise leatherette box, 2001 200 x 350 x 200 mm A turquoise leatherette cover over a wooden box visibly attached to the floor by chrome legs and fixtures. (Associative Photograph #1) Our official instruction, 2004 1260 x 1260 mm This work consists of 5 different objects. These are, from left to right: a standard sheet of carbon paper purchased from the British stationers WH Smiths, used once to trace a name and a postcode, shown here carbon side down; the backside of a sample sheet of Edelweiss 115gsm paper, blue backed, front licked, available in packs of 125 sheets, sized 106.5cmx157.5cm, sent to Gander through the post by James McNaughton paper merchants measures 21cmx29.7cm; an initial sketch, as a plan of how to best annotate this work; a small sachet of salt, source unknown; measurements of an existing sculpture, which needed to be reproduced, noted down during a telephone conversation with the owner of the original sculpture. In 2002-2004 Ryan Gander collected 105 articles and photographs that he thought related strongly to his artistic practice at the time. Initially piled in a box in his studio labelled ‘off-cuts and by-products’ the items can now be seen as a journey through research towards practice. Gander has arranged particular ones in 18 different sequences and then taken life-size photographs of the resulting setting. There is an internal logic to the sequences that makes perfect sense to Gander. For example if put in sequence the titles of the 18 photographs read the sentence: “Our official instruction Is that if we see A vehicle with no lights On we are not To flash it etc And the advice to friends And family is that You should ignore Any vehicles You see without lights I would ask that you pas Your family and friends By phone or other means And who knows It may save a life What kind of a world Are we living in?” What to do with this knowledge is left unclear however. The viewers are invited to find their own narratives within these pieces. The pieces can be seen as a visual physical manifestation of Gander’s performative lecture ‘Loose Associations’ that he has delivered around the world in venues including PS1 (New York) the Pompidou Centre (Paris) and Foksal Gallery (Warsaw) and Art Basel (Basel). A framed photographic colour print from a series of eighteen contains over a hundred articles of research gathered by the artist. An associative path has been devised between the articles using the same methodology the artist's Loose Associations lecture series. Uit: R. Gander, Abake & D. Strauss (eds), Ryan Gander. Catalogue Raisonnable Vol. 1, Zurich 2010, pp. 13, 82.