'Ryan Gander: You Complete Me' at The Pola Museum of Art, Japan

23 May 2025

From 31 May – 30 November 2025, The Pola Museum of Art will present an exhibition featuring the most recent works of Ryan Gander.

Through this wide-ranging, multifaceted body of work, Gander continually reexamines the frameworks and meanings of art. In addition to his own artistic practice, he is deeply engaged in curating exhibitions, teaching at universities and art institutions, and supporting children through various initiatives. He has also written and edited numerous books and has both produced and appeared in television programs that promote art and culture. Gander offers a renewed vision of the artist for the contemporary era.

Describing himself as “a sort of neo-conceptualist and amateur philosopher with a ʻno-styleʼ style,” Gander explores hidden narratives and layered meanings embedded in everyday life, infusing his work with intellectual playfulness and incisive humour. His art engages with themes such as absence, invisibility, death, and potential through complex intertwining of reality and fiction. From a frog that speaks human language to unreadable clocks, a fictional flag, and the fabricated history of a certain pair of siblings, his works are strikingly concrete yet imbued with an elusive sense of mystery. As Gander himself has said, “The objective of art is not to communicate, but to provide catalytic ambiguity.” Meaning in his work is never fixed, and through the viewer's engagement and the processes of interpretation and association, new narratives emerge with every encounter.

Find out more via The Pola Museum of Art.

Image: Ryan Gander, You Complete Me, or I see things you can’t see (A Frogs Tale), 2025, Animatronic, audio, artificial plants, Dimensions variable, © Ryan Gander; Courtesy the artist. Photograph by Ryan Gander Studio.