Maybe: Ryan Gander

Internationally acclaimed artist Ryan Gander explores the radical power of the imagination to reshape our collective reality through his new exhibition Maybe: Ryan Gander. Towner presents Gander’s first UK solo exhibition in nearly 20 years, bringing together new works with existing, yet rarely seen, pieces. Known for incorporating humour into his practice through playful interventions, he creates accessible points of engagement that invite us into the often exclusive world of contemporary art.

Three separate rooms across Towner's top floor each feature different aesthetics, including a fully mirrored room containing Closed systems, 2024, an expansive floor installation of colourful, repurposed toys. Like Gander’s own practice, the exhibition pushes its boundaries, breaking out of the gallery spaces and finding its way throughout the building, animating the public spaces.

Maybe: Ryan Gander includes both new and well-known works that have never been seen in the UK, including I’ve felt everything I’m going to feel - The Unspeakable World, the latest work in a celebrated series of animatronic mice that have captivated audiences around the world. Each mouse, voiced by one of the artist’s daughters, appears from the debris of a hole in a wall to philosophise. Other seminal works include Upside down Breuer chair after a couple of inches of snowfall, 2017, from Gander’s series of mid-century design chairs, upon which cold cast marble sits, representing several inches of snowfall.

Visitors to the exhibition at Towner will be among the first to experience a new body of work, For I am a Sign, in which Gander further expands his practice into painting. The new series of paintings, investigating the intersection between verbal and non-verbal languages, are made by Gander in collaboration with his autistic, non-verbal son; the images are selected by his son and painted by Gander. They refer to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) - a card system that is used by SEND professionals to communicate with children. 

The exhibition also features Gander’s first artificial intelligence, virtual reality simulation titled Ryan Waiting, 2024. Visitors will walk into a wrap-around, immersive bank of monitors on which an avatar of the artist is waiting in an empty, perimeter-less landscape. Acting as a durational hundred-year performance, the avatar’s actions are self-generated by an algorithm saved into a remote server, affected and driven by time of day and external data gathered from internet searches. The avatar’s mood is in constant flux and will ultimately outlive us all. The experience highlights the state of being in-between (waiting) - a rare commodity in today’s life. 

Although he is often described as a conceptual artist, Gander prefers to refer to himself as ‘a sort of neo-conceptual no-style-style amateur philosopher’. Seeing art as a method of exploring ideas, he visually communicates complex concepts or challenges, encouraging the viewer to engage in his world by bringing them into the narrative, rather than being a passive viewer.