Ryan Gander

A fibreglass wall is produced by prop fabricators to resemble poured concrete shuttering. The design of which is taken from a 1980's plastic doorbell housing. Next to the wall is a reconstruction of a map op the nearest city city centre to the the exhibition - commonly made freely available by the tourist information office - is reproduced to include numerous streets existing pre 1911. Most of which mark location where town planners have replaced the city's organic structure with a forumulaic interpretation of 'civic economy'. Uit: R. Gander, Abake & D. Strauss (eds), Ryan Gander. Catalogue Raisonnable Vol. 1, Zurich 2010, pp. 12, 236-244. The installation is composed of an accumulation of seemingly disparate components. One of these components is "A slowing of the spectator's eye". One wall of the exhibition space has been clad in what appears to be a patterned concrete relief, akin to what one would usually expect to find on the walls beneath a motorway underpass or on the exterior side of a civic building that may have been designed and built in the 70's. It is in fact made from fibreglass and is coloured and textured to look like a concrete cast. The wall exists not only as a backdrop for a video&sound piece that encompasses the room but also as a stage or a set onto which a narrative can unfold. As a reconstruction of a facade, this fortification could not be more artificial.