Liam Gillick. A Depicted Horse is not a Critique of a Horse

About

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to announce A Depicted Horse is not a Critique of a Horse, a solo exhibition of new work by Liam Gillick. The exhibition will open with a reception in the company of the artist on Thursday 22 November, 6–8pm.

This exhibition brings together a series of new abstract wall-based works alongside a sequence of large-scale graphics. The two sets of works stand in confrontation to each other, offering a clear view of the distinct contradictions at the heart of the artist’s practice.

Drawn from an extensive archive of prints produced over the last twenty years, the large wall graphics express an interest in production over consumption, each one combining medieval woodcuts with a commentary upon conditions of production – artistic and industrial, cognitive and craft-based. A friar toasts the arrival of the first car to be produced with computer-controlled robots. Saint Sebastian thinks about the “Return on Capital Employed”. And a chivalrous Knight dreams of hard-edged abstraction.

In close proximity to each graphic is a “channel work” – a new series of abstract powder-coated aluminium structures that continue the artist’s interest in secondary forms, derived from elements that support or disguise architectural structures. Rooted in processes of renovation, recuperation and endless development, these works are the latest stage in a long-term production of abstraction as a critique of the aesthetics of neo-liberalism.

The artist’s interest in the semiotics of the built world operating in tension with a consciousness of the conditions encountered and generated by “the contemporary artist” is emphasised by a wall text encountered on entering the gallery. The text is a short story about the artistic condition, placing the artist in an implicated role in relation to the critic and curator.

Three people – a critic, a curator, and an artist – walk into an exhibition. The only thing inside the exhibition is a mirror with a text right next to it:
“This is a magic mirror. If you tell the truth nothing happens. If you lie, you disappear forever....”