LIAM GILLICK EXHIBITION 19 Jan – 24 Mar 2008 PRESS RELEASE – Rotterdam, December 2007 Opening night: Friday 18 January, 6 p.m. Liam Gillick in conversation with Volume magazine Gillick’s solo exhibition at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, is the starting point of his year-long project titled Three perspectives and a short scenario. This will also comprise a solo exhibition by Gillick at Kunsthalle Zürich running parallel to his show in Rotterdam; a “scenario” to be held 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 will be 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 will take place at Witte de With and will consist of three inter-related levels: an architectural intervention Gillick’s exhibition at Witte de With will feature an architectural structure that the artist is developing for the gallery spaces. This structure will be constructed from various screens, creating corridors and semi-permeable galleries, while closing off other spaces. This will alter 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 will also encounter a vitrine designed by Gillick, featuring his own posters, books and texts. a documentary film Gillick’s first documentary film will act 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 will guide 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 will be Gillick´s midcareer 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 will raise 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. For further information, please see overleaf or contact Nathalie Hartjes on press@wdw.nl or +31 (0)10 411 0144
Notes for editors
Artist: Liam Gillick Exhibition title: Three perspectives and a short scenario Exhibition dates: 19 January – 24 March 2008 Press preview and lunch: Thursday 17 January, 11 a.m. (please reserve via press@wdw.nl) Opening night: Friday 18 January, 6 p.m. Curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen Assistant curators: Zoë Gray and Sophie von Olfers Publication: Critical reader to be published in January 2009 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 Additional information: • Liam Gillick was born in 1964 in the UK. • He now lives and works in New York. • This is Gillick’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. • Recent solo exhibitions include the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MOMA (NYC), the Powerplant (Toronto) and the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London). • He is nominated for the 2008 Vincent Award, Amsterdam. • Gillick has worked with Witte de With’s director Nicolaus Schafhausen approximately every five years since the latter directed the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (with the book and exhibition Ibuka!, 1995) through to his time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (where Gillick featured in the solo project David, 1999, and was a key figure in the group show Adorno, 2003). For any further information please email press@wdw.nl or call +31 (0)10 411 0144.