LIAM GILLICK
THE STATE ITSELF BECOMES A SUPER WHATNOT
OPENING: THURSDAY, MAY 8TH 6PM – 8PM
EXHIBITION DATES: MAY 8 – JUNE 14, 2008
GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY – SATURDAY 10AM – 6PM
Casey Kaplan is pleased to
announce ‘The state itself becomes a super whatnot’, the fifth solo
exhibition at the gallery of artist, Liam Gillick. In a practice that
employs specific materials and multiple modes of production, Gillick
examines how the built world carries traces of social, economic, and
political systems.
Since 2004, Gillick has been presenting lectures, writings and artworks
that relate to a body of work titled “Construcción de Uno (Construction
of One)” – most notably as a central figure in the unitednationplaza
and nightschool projects in Berlin, Mexico City and the New Museum in
New York. Taking the form of a constantly reworked potential text, it
comprises a series of theoretical and fictional narratives that evolve
from Gillick’s research of past and present evaluations of the
aesthetics of social systems by focusing on modes of production rather
than consumption. The framework for the project derives from Brazilian
research into Scandinavian car production. In his notes, a group of
workers return to their abandoned workplace in order to rethink
eco-political exchange and to experiment with alternative production
methods.
‘The state itself becomes a super whatnot’, is descriptive of the next
twist in the narrative and designates the gallery space as a site for
the testing of rhetoric and potential exchange simultaneously. In the
exhibition, dual wall progressions, screens, and corrals relate to the
architectural structure of their surroundings and are potentially
regarded as a result of the communal, alternative production models
devised in the scenarios. Each work reflected in another, the Plexiglas
and painted aluminum structures produce competing color schemes:
monochromatic red, evoking many political and cultural symbolisms,
versus their multi-colored opponents. Twin wall texts that announce the
title and its reverse – ‘the whatnot itself becomes a super state’ –
mark the site of the exhibition as an extension of the complex
processes of democratic deferral and infinite sub-contracting that
underscore our current processes of exchange.
Gillick’s work engages with emergent consensus cultures, objects as
context, and time as material. It is within this theoretical framework
that Gillick’s exhibition produces a designated place for critical
interaction.
Liam Gillick is nominated for
the 2008 Vincent Award at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and will
create a major new body of work for the forthcoming Guggenheim
exhibition ‘theanyspacewhatever’ in October 2008. In January of 2008, the artist’s retrospective, ‘Three perspectives and a Short Scenario’,
opened at the Witte de With, Rotterdam and the Kunsthalle Zürich,
Zürich; it will continue to the Kunstverein München, München in
September 2008; and is scheduled to open at the Museum of Contemporary
Art Chicago, Chicago in October 2009.
