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From: Clem
Category: Art
Date: 23 July 2008
Time: 05:18 AM
Review:
One of the more extraordinary developments in the art world in recent days is the announcement that,
(and I can hardly believe I am writing this, yes Im choking on my cornflakes) LIAM GILLICK IS TO
REPRESENT GERMANY AT THE NEXT VENICE BIENNALE.How did this remarkable situation
come about? Here is one of the worlds art -wealthiest countries, with a kunsthalle in every town, an
intellectual climate that takes the visual arts as seriously as literature, an art school system where the
tutors are paid on a par with doctors and lawyers, and they choose LIAM GILLICK to represent them!
Hats off to you , Liam .That is a truly remarkable achievement. You must be doing something right.
Because as I remember it , your show at the Whitechapel in 2002, entitled (dont laugh folks- it really
was called this) " The Wood Way", was , to say the least, rather underwhelming on the, er.......how can
I put it..... aesthetic level?For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gillicks work, he mainly does two
things. One is to make plexiglass and steel screens in pretty colours that are sometimes compared to
Donald Judd. This always confuses me as , as far as I can see, they bear no resemblance to Judd
whatsoever. The other thing he does are wall texts in helvetica, referring in a mildly amusing ironic
way to notions of utopia, or , er, other things. The make grand allusions to heavyweights like Stanley
Kubrick or Sir Thomas More in an off the cuff way that neatly relieves the viewer of any guilt they might
feel for allowing the gap between the shallow and the deep to be closed.
Whilst both things are mildly attractive on a design level, when you put them together in the
same room they begin to interact in a way that , to say the least, is, somewhat ill-judged.But, on the
other hand, as Clement Greenberg put it, "often great art looks ugly at first". So maybe this is great
art.Its probably slightly better than his writing, which I always enjoy, in the same way I enjoy the films of
Ed Wood. His writing often employs the quite arresting device of appearing to construct a grand
ideological narrative a la post Marxist critical theory , only to undermine it with an off the cuff
and "contingent" comment like the fact Josef Albers once worked as a consultant for the Coca - Cola
corporation. It's apparently "post- Marxist specifity". And here he is again , lecturing us in this months
Artforum, on the importance of the legacy of May 1968.Apparently, it introduced into Western Culture
the notion of "difference" thus changing the way we regard the "other". Well I'm glad Liam was
introduced to such exemplary liberal notions at such an early age, because by my reckoning, he was
four years old at the time.
Confused as I am by the machinations of the art world, this really takes the biscuit.So I asked a
leading artworld figure of my acquaintance how this state of affairs had come about. Gillicks
popularity, they assured me ,is due to his lack of identity.He's completely inoffensive and his work has
no personality whatsoever. So he's the perfect strategic choice to represent Germany at the next
Venice Biennale.To put it another way, it's to do with the pleasure that comes from closing the gap
between the world and your emotional response to it, which in a strange kind of way, is the existential
condition of our time, par excellence.