Ryan Christopher, Apparatus Notes

No Show Space is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new sculpture and text-based work by Ryan Christopher.

Apparatus Notes

1. An excerpt from On the Human Image of God, a treatise by Gregory of Nyssa, the fourth-century Cappadocian theologian and mystic, drawn from a section on soul–body interactions mediated by ‘pores’, invisible passages throughout the body for spirit, breath and fluids. To illustrate these interactions, he offers a psychosomatic description of the respiratory (breathing) apparatus in a state of grief. In such a state, these invisible pores contract and compress, with groans or shrieks released as the body attempts to widen them.
2. A 2020 study showing the ability of New Caledonian crows to ‘plan for specific future tool use’. When presented with baited apparatuses and a selection of objects, only one of which was useful, crows were required to use the correct tool in order to gain a food reward. Correct tool–apparatus combinations were as follows: stick to tube, stone to platform, hook to dispenser.
   

Central to the exhibition are these two seemingly unrelated notes. One, a fourth-century theological treatise; the other, a contemporary study of animal cognition. Both are concerned with apparatus and the systems, mechanisms, or conditions through which bodies interact with the world.

Gregory of Nyssa’s excerpt outlines a spiritual physiology of grief, describing the body's involuntary release mechanisms as the respiratory system responds to sorrow. The crow study, by contrast, documents intentional, tool-based interactions with baited apparatuses which involve acts of planning, precision, and cognitive mapping.

Through this juxtaposition, Christopher explores apparatus not merely as object or instrument, but as a conceptual hinge between bodily impulse and rational function, mysticism and science, grief and intelligence. Positioning the crow as an unseen mortality figure that acts upon the body.

Ryan Christopher (b. 1998, UK) is an artist based in London. Selected exhibitions include Eclogue, St. Perpetua, Slewe Gallery, Amsterdam, 2024; Offspring 2023, De Ateliers, Amsterdam, 2023; Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth, Woonhuis, Amsterdam, 2023; A morsel of curd, TG, Nottingham 2022. He recently graduated from Sculpture (MA) Royal College of Art, London 2024-2025 and completed a two-year residency at De Ateliers, Amsterdam from 2022-2023. He is a graduate from Fine Art (BA) Coventry University 2018-2021.