Liam Gillick
Three perspectives and a short scenario
2008 WITTE DE WITH, CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION
© Bob Goedewaagen
Jan 19 to Mar 24, 2008
Gillick’s solo exhibition at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, was the starting point of his year-long project titled Three perspectives and a short scenario. This also comprised a solo exhibition by Gillick at Kunsthalle Zürich running parallel to his show in Rotterdam; a “scenario” in June 2008 at the Kunstverein München; and a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in January 2009.
Three perspectives and a short scenario was a continuous investigation into Gillick’s practice and an in-depth study of his work to date, adopting a different form at each “station”. The first station of the project took place at Witte de With and consisted of three inter-related levels:
an architectural intervention
Gillick’s exhibition at Witte de With featured an architectural structure that the artist is developing for the gallery spaces. This structure was constructed from various screens, creating corridors and semi-permeable galleries, while closing off other spaces. This altered the visitor’s sensation of space, direction and perspective, leading him along a labyrinthine route to a screening room at the heart of the exhibition. On the way, the visitor also encountered a vitrine designed by Gillick, featuring his own posters, books and texts.
a documentary film
Gillick’s first documentary film acted as a “reframing” of all his previous work, derived from documentation of projects dating from 1988 to the recent unitednationsplaza project in Berlin, and encompassing projects that range in scope from Gillick’s various lectures to his architectural designs for the Home Office in London. The film guided the viewer through a series of images, creating new narratives via the movement of the camera, accompanied by the artist’s voiceover. Rather than employing the “usual” format of a retrospective exhibition, the film itself was Gillick’s mid-career retrospective.
“institutional zone”
The remaining space within the galleries is categorized by Gillick as the “institutional zone”. This has been offered by Gillick back to Witte de With’s curatorial team, in a gesture designed to highlight the division of responsibility between artist and institution in the creation of any exhibition. This gesture can be seen as either one of generosity or provocation, depending on how it is interpreted by the receiver (in this case, by Witte de With). The curatorial team has decided to use this zone to launch its series of solo presentations planned for 2008, presenting the work of other artists during Gillick’s solo exhibition, considering his spatial intervention as a given. The selected artists (beginning with Manon de Boer, from 25 January) have not been invited to comment upon Gillick’s work, nor upon the framework that he has created for this period, although certain parallels may emerge regardless. Instead, it is a curatorial choice to treat Witte de With as a prototypical contemporary art institution, by using the given space to present contemporary art. Any resulting discrepancies, ambiguities or misunderstandings raised questions about the roles and functions of art institutions and the assumptions or expectations of artists and visitors.
This brings us back to Gillick’s own practice, a practice that questions the conventions of exhibition design and modes of display; and that asks how an artistic practice can be represented.
Curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen
Artist: Liam Gillick
Gillick is an artist based in New York. His work exposes the dysfunctional aspects of a modernist legacy in terms of abstraction and architecture when framed within a globalized, neo-liberal consensus, and extends into structural rethinking of the exhibition as a form. He has produced a number of short films since the late 2000s which address the construction of the creative persona in light of the enduring mutability of the contemporary artist as a cultural figure. Margin Time (2012) The Heavenly Lagoon (2013) and Hamilton: A Film by Liam Gillick (2014). The book Industry and Intelligence: Contemporary Art Since 1820 was published by Columbia University Press in March 2016.
Gillick’s work has been included in numerous important exhibitions including documenta and the Venice, Berlin and Istanbul Biennales - representing Germany in 2009 in Venice. Solo museum exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London. Gillick’s work is held in many important public collections including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Over the last twenty five years Gillick has also been a prolific writer and critic of contemporary art – contributing to Artforum, October, Frieze and e-flux Journal. He is the author of a number of books including a volume of his selected critical writing. High profile public works include the British Government Home Office (Interior Ministry) building in London and the Lufthansa Headquarters in Frankfurt. Throughout this time Gillick has extended his practice into experimental venues and collaborative projects with artists including Philippe Parreno, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Lawler, Adam Pendleton and the band New Order, in a series of concerts in Manchester, Turin and Vienna.
Exhibition partners: Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein München, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Supported by: The Henry Moore Foundation The British Council Volume Magazine Casey Kaplan, New York Esther Schipper, Berlin Eva Presenhuber, Zurich Air de Paris, Paris Corvi Mora, London Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp Meyer Kainer, Vienna
Meaning Liam Gillick
Meaning Liam Gillick is published at the occasion of the ongoing survey exhibition Liam Gillick: Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario in Witte de With (19.01.08 – 24.03.08), Kunsthalle Zürich (26.01.08 – 30.03.08), Kunstverein München (27.09.08 –16.11.08) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (10.10.09 – 10.01.10).
Co-published and distributed exclusively by The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA
The foregoing texts and images are provided and copyrighted by: https://www.fkawdw.nl/en/
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