How do we know if a melted snowman ever existed? Was it a rumour? These questions are referenced when considering a recent show by Ryan Gander in New York at Lisson Gallery in 2020 – staged at a time when the artist himself couldn’t travel to be there in person. Another exhibition planned at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, where Gander was a 2019-20 Hodder Fellow, had to be mounted in his own studio and experienced virtually, similarly constituting a space beyond or in-between seeing and being. (View a virtual tour of the exhibition)
In the new publication, Ryan Gander, A Melted Snowman, Guggenheim Museum curator Katharine Brinson offers a close reading of Gander’s work, being one of the chosen few to have managed to see the 2020 exhibition. Sohrab Mohebbi interviews Gander on the myths and anecdotes that surround his and other works of art, while Ossian Ward charts the elastic passing of time across the entire practice. Also running throughout the book is Staccato Refractions, a text by Gander that was featured in the exhibition in the form of a digital info-totem. Other passages of image, color and text are marshaled into place by book designer David Reinfurt, Lecturer in Visual Arts at Princeton.
On October 3, Reinfurt will moderate a conversation with Gander about the book while an electronic snowstorm runs quietly behind them. Jeff Whetstone, Director of the Program in Visual Arts, introduces the conversation. A Q&A session with the audience will follow.
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