Ryan Gander, one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists from the UK, will have his first solo exhibition Human / non Human / Broken / non Broken in China in March 2017. Presented by Cc Foundation, in collaboration with Lisson Gallery, the exhibition will feature new sculptures and a site-specific installation conceived specifically for the gallery space in Shanghai.

Born in 1976, Gander is one of the most productive artists in the UK and his practice covers a wide range of media including installation, sculpture, photography and publications. His ingenious use of materials and penetrating creativity have earned him wide attention from the global art scene. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne, Australia), Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and the major international

touring exhibition Make every show like it’s your last. Gander has also shown in group exhibitions at the Shanghai Biennale, Documenta, the Venice Biennale and the Sydney Biennial.

Gander’s complex and unfettered conceptual practice is stimulated by queries, investigations and what-ifs, rather than strict rules or limits. For example: what if children were asked to reassemble the wood pieces originally constructed as Crate Furniture designed by Gerrit Rieveld (Rietveld Reconstruction, 2006)? What if all the

pieces in a chess set were remade in Zebra Wood, so that neither side was entirely black nor white (Bauhaus Revisited, 2003)?

Recognised as a cultural magpie in the widest sense, Gander polymathically taking popular notions apart only to rebuild them in new ways. Language and narration play an overarching role in his work, not least in his attempt to slip a nonsensical, palindromic new word “mitim” into the English language. He is a keen observer of human beings and their life, which makes him a “story-teller”, his works, vehicles of these stories, and his audience, the readers of the stories. According to the artist, good art allows audiences to enter it from different angles and in different manners. Occasionally his ludic concepts drift into more bodily, relational challenges, which can be seen in his work This Consequence of 2006, that involved the unsettling presence of a gallery owner or invigilator dressed in an all-white Adidas tracksuit, with an additional sinister red stain embroidered into the fabric.

Invitation and collaboration are also at the heart of Gander’s fugitive art – whether he is exchanging fictionalised newspaper obituaries with an artist friend or taking pictures of people looking at pictures at an art fair – although arguably every solipsistic action he takes merely holds up yet another mirror to his ceaselessly voracious mind.

In March 2017, Cc Foundation in collaboration with Lisson Gallery, will present the very first solo exhibition of the artist in China. The exhibition will offer audiences in China the opportunity to experience Ryan Gander’s intriguing and charismatic art.

About Cc Foundation

Cc Foundation was founded and supported by David Chau. With offices in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, the foundation currently runs two gallery spaces in Shanghai: one at Songjiang District and the other at M50 Art Zone - which presented its inaugural exhibition in November 2016. The foundation is committed to supporting and sponsoring young and emerging cultural and art practitioners and collectives, encouraging innovative ideas and practices, fostering and improving the environment for cultural and art practitioners and promoting the development of Chinese contemporary culture, arts and art education. In line with the vision of its founder, Cc Foundation aspires to build itself into a global art foundation with world-class collections, and to achieve that, the foundation will not only play an active role in promoting the development of global contemporary art and supporting the practice of emerging artists in the long run, but also revisit and probe into the exhibitions and events with archival significance.

About Lisson Gallery

Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Established in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, it pioneered the early careers of important Minimal and Conceptual artists, such as Art & Language, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Robert Ryman among many others. In its second decade the gallery introduced significant British artists, including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary and Julian Opie. It is also responsible for raising the international profile of a number of prominent artists from across Asia such as Liu Xiaodong, Lee Ufan, Rashid Rana, Ai Weiwei, and Tatsuo Miyajima, as well as a younger generation of artists led by Cory Arcangel, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Ryan Gander and Haroon Mirza. Today Lisson Gallery supports and develops 51 international artists across two exhibition spaces in London, one in Milan and a fourth under the High Line in New York.

Courtesy of the artist, Cc Foundation and Lisson Gallery.