The Ryder is pleased to present The Sun, a Gold Nugget and Seven Stairs, Andrea Galvani’s first solo show in London. The exhibition is a reconfiguration of selected works from The End, an acclaimed international trilogy originally presented in Peru, New York, and Mexico. A complex, cross-disciplinary project, The Sun, a Gold Nugget and Seven Stairs includes photography, drawings, sculpture, video, and introduces a new performance to European audiences. .

Present in the dust of our solar system, gold has been at the centre of the earth since the beginning of geological time. A gold nugget, accelerated to the speed of sound, is perched atop a concrete plinth in the centre of the gallery. Juxtaposing object and image, a large-scale analogue photograph freezes an F-18 military aircraft in the moment it is crossing the sound barrier. Filmed at supersonic speeds, a never-ending sunset documents a segment of infinity. Drawings, derived from theories which altered scientific understanding, are extracted from historical context and suspended in a silent dialogue. .

Developed with institutional support and scientific rigor, The Sun, a Gold Nugget and Seven Stairs attempts to articulate and extend the limits of physicality and immateriality. During the inauguration and at certain times throughout the course of the exhibition, the artist will collaborate with physicists from Space and Atmospheric Physics at the Imperial College of London to stage an intervention – progressively transforming the space.

Andrea Galvani (b.1973, Italy) lives in New York and Mexico City. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the Whitney Museum, New York; 4th Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art; the Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland; 9th Biennal of Contemporary Art of Nicaragua; Aperture Foundation, New York; The Calder Foundation, New York; Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Trento, Italy; Macro Museum, Rome; GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam; Oslo Plads, Copenhagen, among others. In 2011, he received the New York Exposure Prize and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. He earned a BFA in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1999, and his MFA in Visual Art from Bilbao University in 2002. He has been a visiting artist at NYU (2009-10) and has completed artist residencies at Location One International Artist Residency Program New York (2008), LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2009), M.I.A. Artist Space Program/Columbia University School of the Arts, Brooklyn, NY (2010).