Consistent and Inconsistent Thinking

This artwork featured in Synthetic Landscapes (2017).

An abstract three dimensional sculpture, loosely representing the way in which an organic plant may grow, cobbled together from a pile of offcuts of timber discarded during the production of other artworks, taken from the wood workshops of various UK art schools.

To our knowing eyes, the ‘tree’ looks unnatural, as a piece of flatpack furniture might, and the bold colours on the branches jar. It is a piece of nature, reconfigured into another natural object in an effort that is naïvely disarming.

Ryan Gander’s complex and unfettered conceptual practice is stimulated by questions, investigations or what-ifs, rather than strict rules or limits. Gander is a cultural magpie in the widest sense, taking popular notions apart only to rebuild them in new ways.

Occasionally his playful concepts drift into more bodily, relational challenges. Invitation and collaboration are also at the heart of Gander’s work, although arguably every action he takes merely holds up yet another mirror to his ceaselessly voracious mind.

Image: Ryan Gander, Consistent and inconsistent thinking. Large off-cut tree, Timber, acrylic paint, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist. 

 

About the artist

Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander exhibited in Synthetic Landscapes, Weston Park, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, 2017.

Image: Ryan Gander, Consistent and inconsistent thinking. Large off-cut tree, timber, acrylic paint. Leeds Beckett University and Norwich University of the Arts August, 2016.