Since the opening in June 2001, Maison Hermès 8F Le Forum has hosted 30 exhibitions. This year, we are pleased to announce the solo show of a UK artist Ryan Gander at the gallery’s memorable 10th anniversary. The show will offer an opportunity to reflect upon art exhibitions and art history.

Born in 1976, Ryan Gander lives and works in London. His conceptual practice that stirs imagination is already well known worldwide. Here in Japan, he has created a stir through the recent show at Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, as well as the solo exhibition at the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine. Having participated in the Venice Biennale and the Yokohama Triennale this year, Gander is one of the most promising artists of today.

This exhibition, with the paradoxical title “An exhibition lost”, is also a “parallel exhibition”. It floats freely in time, between past, present and future. Although the show consists solely of Gander’s works, its frequent reference to landmark works in the art history or to the imagined artists blurs our sense of here and now, evoking an “alternative reality”. Gander also highlights the history of the exhibition site, Le Forum, by showing a work that recalls the 10 years memory in this place.

"The exhibition aims to address the way exhibitions are remembered, misremembered, imagined, documented and romanticized through the use of art history, hopefully activating the spectators imagination directing them to fill in gaps or begin to imagine a future history of art." (Ryan Gander)

Gander subtly suggests the “alternative reality” by casually placed objects and texts. Moving through this show is to question what the art exhibition and what artworks really are by definition. The visitors will find themselves doing just so: reconsidering the art.

Image: Ryan Gander, "Your present time orientation (First Act) ‒ Random abstraction" (2011) © Ryan Gander Courtesy of TARO NASU