There are infinite ways to connect subjects and matter; and of course no taxonomic system is correct, though some are useful. Grouping is always a failure by way of reduction (of the self-servingly over-permissive sort). We mention this as we want to be forgiven in our brief attempt at contextualizing the artist Liam Gillick, whose work and simple/sharp site are our subject.
In our youth the arrival of what might be called minimal abstraction created a paradigm shift in our understanding of art and the world at large (truly). With the event of Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Robert Ryman, et al, came the freedom of no longer having to suffer alone the vain, endless, mawkish subjectivity posing as compassionate objectivity of the people around us. This minimal abstraction was theory and supposition getting down to empirical business, eschewing lame but profitable broadness for poetic albeit rigid phenomenological exploration. It remains a continually sharpening filter through which most of our perception and subsequent conceptions pass.
Our attraction was always toward negentropic works of abstraction, pieces that though experiential, were ultimately one sided propositions, to be completed personally (non-socially). Subsequently, we looked at art by the likes of Dan Graham and Lawrence Weiner admiringly, but at a distance — we felt something like a civic entanglement promoted in their work, and though it was clearly of a positive sort, our trauma of the aforementioned disingenuous social contract, kept us from engaging. That is until encountering the work of Liam Gillick.
With Liam Gillick’s work the scope of abstract proposition becomes comprehensive, mostly because his output is highly critical of it. With Gillick, abstract art becomes full Hegelian dialectic, containing the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. “By making the abstract concrete, art no longer retains any abstract quality; it merely announces a constant striving for a state of abstraction and in turn produces more abstraction to pursue.” It is our opinion that this tension of point, counter-point, merger, is what is wanted in any serious love or sincerely offered premise. Theoretical detachment or the centripetally oriented should be strong enough to handle the broader social context from which it is condensed. As well, the social, the institutional, the solipsistic, the aesthetic, the escapist, or what have you, should all be part of the experience of the abstract expression. And Liam Gillick is certainly a wonderful, aspirational, fundamental agent in this continual broadening and strengthening of what might generally be called perspective in art.
As an aside it must be said that liamgillick.info is a wholly gratifying example of a site as living archive; it rewards perusal.
In our youth the arrival of what might be called minimal abstraction created a paradigm shift in our understanding of art and the world at large (truly). With the event of Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Robert Ryman, et al, came the freedom of no longer having to suffer alone the vain, endless, mawkish subjectivity posing as compassionate objectivity of the people around us. This minimal abstraction was theory and supposition getting down to empirical business, eschewing lame but profitable broadness for poetic albeit rigid phenomenological exploration. It remains a continually sharpening filter through which most of our perception and subsequent conceptions pass.
Our attraction was always toward negentropic works of abstraction, pieces that though experiential, were ultimately one sided propositions, to be completed personally (non-socially). Subsequently, we looked at art by the likes of Dan Graham and Lawrence Weiner admiringly, but at a distance — we felt something like a civic entanglement promoted in their work, and though it was clearly of a positive sort, our trauma of the aforementioned disingenuous social contract, kept us from engaging. That is until encountering the work of Liam Gillick.
With Liam Gillick’s work the scope of abstract proposition becomes comprehensive, mostly because his output is highly critical of it. With Gillick, abstract art becomes full Hegelian dialectic, containing the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. “By making the abstract concrete, art no longer retains any abstract quality; it merely announces a constant striving for a state of abstraction and in turn produces more abstraction to pursue.” It is our opinion that this tension of point, counter-point, merger, is what is wanted in any serious love or sincerely offered premise. Theoretical detachment or the centripetally oriented should be strong enough to handle the broader social context from which it is condensed. As well, the social, the institutional, the solipsistic, the aesthetic, the escapist, or what have you, should all be part of the experience of the abstract expression. And Liam Gillick is certainly a wonderful, aspirational, fundamental agent in this continual broadening and strengthening of what might generally be called perspective in art.
As an aside it must be said that liamgillick.info is a wholly gratifying example of a site as living archive; it rewards perusal.