'Animal!? An Exhibition of Masterpieces’ featuring Ryan Gander at the Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture, Landerneau, France

22 July 2025

Until 2 November 2025, the Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture presents ‘Animal!? An Exhibition of Masterpieces’, featuring Ryan Gander's life-size animatronic gorilla, School of Languages (2023). Seemingly timid, she displays a desire to learn, using fingers to notate units. The purpose of her act of recording, whether units of time, currency or an accumulation or decline of another quantity, remains unclear.

The exhibition, curated by Christian Alandete, offers a transversal and transhistorical approach to the place of the animal in artistic representations. One of the first subjects in the history of art, the animal appears from parietal art to the present day with the same importance. At the turn of the 20th century, animals became a key focus for successive avant-garde movements. Many artists saw them as subjects capable of revolutionising aesthetic experience. This was especially true for the Surrealists, who turned their attention to hybrid species and creatures that had previously been dismissed as monsters. These new subjects of observation also reflect the emergence of a more humanist society, one that began to question the roles of both humans and animals within the community of the living.

Over the centuries, the study of animality has served to categorise, rank, and draw distinctions. These distinctions were not only between humans and animals, but also among humans themselves, by attributing animal traits to those considered "less human". From physiognomy and its racist derivatives, to mimicry and anthropomorphism, artists have used their work to reveal the various sides of humanity. In doing so, they offer new perspectives on difference and highlight what ultimately unites us all.

Find out more via the Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture.

Image: Installation view of ‘Animal!? An Exhibition of Masterpieces’ at Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc, Landerneau, France, 2025. © Ryan Gander. ©FHEL2025. Photo Nathalie Savale.