Liam Gillick
'Complete Bin Development'
6 pieces, each 300 x 150 x 160 cm

Einladung zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung
am Samstag, 18. Januar 2014 ab 18.00 Uhr

LIAM GILLICK

Liam Gillick is one of the most prominent and important figures to have emerged in international contemporary art since the mid-1990s. The diverse forms of his art — ranging across sculpture, installation, film-making, writing, music and other, widely varied, collaborative projects — often allude to pivotal moments in the history of modern and postmodern art. In particular, the profound, dual influence of minimalism and conceptualism is evident both in his recurrent sculptural use of sleek modular forms (strictly colour-coded based on the RAL system) and in his continued commitment to more ‘dematerialized’ modes of practice (his many texts and talks are, for example, understood as integral elements of his art). Crucially, however, Gillick’s references to prior forms of progressive art are always situated in relation to other vital co-ordinates for understanding the place of art within contemporary culture. Questions of economy, labour and social organisation are ongoing pre-occupations. So, the precisely calibrated use of plexiglass and alumunium in a Liam Gillick sculpture might recall minimalism’s ‘specific objects’, but these materials are also employed on the basis of other associations — as, for example, the main components of riot shields or corporate signage. Gillick’s work brings apparently contradictory meanings into renewed proximity, thus repeatedly testing — and troubling — the terms and expectations of art within contemporary capitalism.

Complete Bin Development is a sequence of towered structures, which comprise of a series of open frameworks in a series of permutations. The work relates to the research into possible permutations available within car body production just prior to the introduction of completely automated production systems. At the same time the works are abstractions in their own right. The height of each stack is only limited by standard engineering rules. Each work can be constructed from any number of permutations of the wall structures. The works can be sited in exterior or interior locations. Any number of stacks can be located near each other -always separated by at least 1.50m.

The abstract structure always finds form as a relational backdrop to other activities, terrains and interactions. By destroying the abstract via making it concrete, the ambient and the temporary are heightened and become an enduring associative abstraction that replaces the lack in the artwork. The abstraction that is produced by abstract art is not a reflection of the abstraction at the start of the process. The making of a concrete structure produces further abstraction – the art object in this case is merely a marker or waypoint towards new abstraction.

Liam Gillick has had many solo exhibitions including From 199A to 199B: Liam Gillick, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2012; Museum Stzuki, Lodz, Poland, 2011; One long walk… Two short piers…, Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany, 2010; How will you behave: A kitchen cat speaks, German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario, Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich, 2008, travelling to Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2008; A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include: Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner: A Syntax of Dependency, M HKA Museum van Hedendaage Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium, 2011; 8th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China, 2010; The one hundred and sixty‐third floor, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2009 and The Shapes of Space, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007. Gillick presented Creative Disruptions in the Age of Soft Revolutions at the Bampton Lecture Series, Columbia University, New York, 2013. Liam Gillick publishes texts that function in parallel to his artwork including: Proxemics (Selected writing 1988-2006), JRP-Ringier (2007); Factories in the Snow by Lilian Haberer, JRP- Ringier (2007); Meaning Liam Gillick, MIT Press (2009); and Allbooks, Book Works, London (2009).

Duesseldorf, January 2014