ryan gander's creative block
Ryan Gander's art can be understood as art only because it can't be described as anything else. The London-based conceptual artist and scholastic magpie, whose solo show, Heralded as the New Black," is currently up at the South London Gallery, creates gestures and thought-provoking ideas in lieu of working in conventional media. At the gallery, visitors will be offered a local street map, tweaked to the include street names that were in use in 1914, and can view an installation of 36 wooden printers' blocks made in the style of Dutch graphic designer and typographer Wim Crouwel's 1967 "new alphabet." The star of the show is "A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw, as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor," an installation of 100 small crystal balls, each of which contain a laser-etched image of a fluttering sheet of paper. The haikulike title is intended to symbolize writers' block and any comparable creative hurdle. But considering Gander's prolific output and expansive way of experiencing the world around him, it seems hard to imagine that creative blocks are anything but abstract ideas to him.



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