Liam Gillick deploys multiple forms to expose the new ideological control systems that emerged at the beginning of the 1990s. Examining the aesthetics of the constructed world, Gillick’s work exposes the dysfunctional aspects of a modernist legacy in terms of abstraction and architecture when framed within a globalised, neo-liberal consensus.
Read MoreGillick’s work ranges from small books to large-scale architectural collaborations. His practice exists in a constant tension between his formally minimalistic works that reflect upon the language of renovated space and his critical approach through writing and the use of text. This approach is brought together in a continual testing of the conventions of the exhibition as form. In addition, he has produced a number of short films since the late 2000s, which address the construction of the creative persona in the light of the enduring mutability of the contemporary artist as a cultural figure.
Gillick uses a wide-ranging vocabulary to knowingly question the role art may play in society and how aesthetics are a political issue in the neo-liberal economy. His artworks place the viewer in an implicated role and designate spaces where it might be possible to rethink the way the built world intersects with modes of critique.
A selection of Liam Gillick's critical writing appeared as Proxemics; Selected Writings (1988–2006) in 2007 and his artistic writing as Allbooks in 2009. In 2016 Columbia University published Industry and Intelligence: Contemporary Art Since 1820, an analysis of the origins of contemporary art.
Text courtesy Esther Schipper.
