Output details

On the subject of horizontals and verticals a ‘Bird-walk’ is added (The remnants of Theo and Piet’s fall from 1924 through Frank’s living room window at Taliesin, during a struggle brought on by an argument over the dynamic aspect of the diagonal line again)

This research, part of a series of experimental projects in contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum New York, culminated in the creation of a new, site-specific installation, in which visitors encountered a scene of apparent catastrophe. Relating to my on-going exploration of the schism between the Dutch artists Piet Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg, the research focuses upon a site-conditional, fictional narrative which encompasses these 20th century European artists located in the USA. The work plays on actual events that extend into the fictitious, touching upon humour and a critique of modernist concerns. Mondrian and Van Doesburg severed their relationship in 1924 due to Van Doesburg’s belief in the diagonal line as a valid element in abstract art, which conflicted with Mondrian’s insistence on a reductive visual language consisting of only gridded horizontals and verticals. In this work I imagine this artistic dogmatism provoking a violent struggle between the two men, which sends them crashing through a stained-glass window in the home of Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect of the New York Guggenheim Museum. In a mysterious temporal and spatial discontinuity, the debris from this accident appears to have landed in the Guggenheim’s reading room, showering fragments of glass and lead over the books about Wright’s life and works. The viewer is invited into what resembles a crime scene to decipher the scenario and reach their own conclusions. The installation was accompanied by a large monograph, 370 pages, with texts by Hans Ulrich-Obrist and Dr. Emily King, entitled, ‘Ryan Gander: Catalogue Raisonnable Vol 1’ (Les Presses du Reel, 2010).