By Ryan Gander

»I don’t really like much art. That might sound strange, but it’s the same with music. I can only find a few artists that last for me, and those are the artists that are constantly changing, constantly trying to reinvent their practices. It’s hard to pick art for art’s sake – sometimes artists make good stuff, sometimes rubbish, there is no genius – so I prefer to invest my attention on people in a sort of belief that their trajectory is interesting, not their by-products.«

Bruno Munari

Munari wasn’t really an artist, he was a sort of inventor I guess, making children’s books, games, graphics, objects, machines etc. I think it is precisely because he never considered himself an artist that his work is so absent of ego. There’s a great story of a feud between him and Calder over who first produced and exhibited »mobiles«. Similar in design and appearance, Munari’s were made out of card and string and suspended above the cots of his friends’ children to whom he’d given them as gifts. Calder’s monstrous steel versions hung in museums and demanded incomprehensible prices. Munari didn’t care, fulfilment for him came from the knowledge that his humble hanging devices brought happiness and intrigue to people. Calder was allegedly annoyed that people suspected him of plagiarism. Munari represents, for me, everything that is good and honest in being a creative practitioner. I recently participated in a show curated by Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel which presented a selection of Munari works alongside young, contemporary artists at Le Plateau in Paris. It was possibly the best show I saw in the last year. *1907 in Milan, † 1998 in Milan

Jorinde Voigt

Jorinde’s work makes me jealous. I’ve never been a big fan of artists that are stylistic or have a repetitive practice, both of which Jorinde does, but somehow her mode of drawing is so idiosyncratic yet versatile that she can explore a massive breadth of concepts and content. This is something I don’t have – my own language – maybe because my work is based around the use of multiple languages. I’m intrigued by what it would be like to be that fluent in a language, to be able to use it so concisely, economically and aptly. *1977 in Frankfurt, lives in Berlin

Jesse Wine

Jesse is a young artist from Chester, the same town I was born in. I met him by chance in a hotel lobby in Switzerland and we recognised each other’s accents immediately. It turned out we both went to the same high school and both ended up making art for a living. Very strange considering that for most northern town dwellers »art« is not even a pastime, never mind a career choice. Art is now a job for him as his practice is attracting masses of attention, and quite rightly so: it has the excitement of a teenager, the whit of a Liverpudlian comedian and the charm of my father. *1983 in Chester, lives in London

Santo Tolone

Santo is Italian, he speaks English very well but will pretend he doesn’t, or on other occasions he will pretend he hasn’t understood correctly. I don’t know why he does this. Perhaps it is for comic effect. More likely I think it may be an unframed extension of his practice. Santo’s work is beautiful and rammed full with super-loops of meaning. He seems to make art the same way as he chooses to live his life, in fact the more you get to know him the more it seems his art and life are seamlessly merged, the way he cooks, eats, dresses, parties, speaks, everything. He is my favourite artist and I know this because I am scared he is better than me. *1979 in Como, lives in London and Como

Michel François

I think he is one of the most interesting artists working today. His work is as complex as it is accessible, which is a hard balance to find. He has an incredible ability to seduce the spectator with intrigue, drawing them in so that when they are confronted by the complicated or challenging elements of the work they can’t turn their back on it. Michel was a tutor of mine at art school and in a weird way I owe him everything. One day he told me to take a slide out of a slide mount and project only the light not the image. As I performed the task I remember him saying, »Is that the effect you were trying to explain?« I sort of knew what I was doing after that. *1956 in Saint-Trond, Belgium, lives in Brussels
 

For this year’s documenta, RYAN GANDER  (*1976) occupied the exhibition space with nothing but wind. The British conceptual artist, often described as a storyteller, is interested in the mechanisms and structure of language – for parody, reference and fiction. Using every conceivable artistic medium from sculpture to installation, slide shows to books and conversations, he combines personal anecdotes, modernism, literature, art history and everyday trivia. Gander participated in the Shanghai Biennale in 2012 and has had solo exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco. Ryan Gander lives in London.