Liam Gillick - The Wood Way

Liam Gillick has played a central role in the contemporary art scene through numerous collaborations with other artists, writers, architects and designers. Born in 1964, Gillick studied at Goldsmiths College and has exhibited widely across continental Europe and the United States. His practice encompasses many activities including writing, curating, designing and teaching which all overlap to form a complex and multi-layered body of work. This is Gillick's first major solo show in London. It brings together work made since the mid-1990s, focusing on two series: The What if? Scenario and Discussion Island/Big Conference Centre... Using Plexiglas and aluminium, these works hover between sculpture, installation and the language of architectural re-modelling. Echoing the rectilinear aesthetic of high modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and the anonymous renovators of our cityscape, their acid colours and provisional quality present an exhilaratingly corrupted Minimalism. A labyrinthine construction in the Whitechapel's Lower Gallery offers a short journey full of potential negotiations and chance encounters, through a series of thresholds, vistas and dead-ends. If you take 'the wood way' (from the German expression 'Holzweg'), you have taken the wrong route and are lost in the woods. In this context, it both describes Gillick's working technique and refers to the exhibition design. Walking through the exhibition may well feel like taking 'The Wood Way' both literally and metaphorically. Text pieces, photographs, piles of glitter and a new limited edition artwork reveal the range of the artist's source material - recording prior exhibition experiences while pointing to potential future collaborations. Gillick has also worked in the Whitechapel's auditorium and café, amplifying these spaces as colourful arenas for debate and discussion. Pressetext

Liam Gillick - The Wood Way