Ryan Gander Closed systems, 2024

Closed systems is a new floor installation by Ryan Gander. Wooden and plastic toys of various shapes, sizes and colors are placed on the floor in straight and neat parallel lines. The toys are positioned in such way as to create narrow pathways, just wide enough to give the visitor a chance to travel through them.

Closed systems is both a collaboration with his son and a portrait of sort, by means of the young boy's favorite activity of ordering these toys. For Gander, it is a celebration of his son's particular sense of beauty and order and the toys a representation of an emotional landscape. Navigating its paths is a symbol for the distinct ways we, and Baxter, are operating in the world.

Toys are an element that Ryan Gander has used before in his works to connote the realm of children, their creativity, boundless imagination and playfulness.