Interview

Liam Gillick: Needlessly difficult? Embarrassingly simple? A curator’s artist? An artist’s curator? A post-conceptual-intellectual crowd-pleaser? It’s hard to sum up an artist whose work feels simultaneously so familiar, casual, and playful, and at the same time so considered, political, and obtuse. Gillick, who was born in 1964, is probably most recognized for his handsome color-coded Plexiglas and aluminum sculptures often found in public spaces (such as his façade of London’s Home Office headquarters). But what you see is not always what you get. And these seemingly elementary freestanding grids and lattices are but the tip of the iceberg in the 45-year-old artist’s hefty output. His work also takes the form of wall drawings, wall texts, furniture, façades, books, plays, films, and more—all of which more often suggest possibilities rather than illustrations. I was a fan before I met him in 1998, shortly after I moved to New York. Now, he’s a friend. So how could Liam Gillick, an artist who never seems to catch his breath, be having a three-part mid-career survey already? And what is he doing representing Germany at the 53rd Venice Biennale? The answer (to borrow a signal Gillick trope) is why not? and what if?

MATTHEW BRANNON: Interviews are complicated because they have so much to do with setups.

LIAM GILLICK: You should do this one like

Charlie Rose, by asking the question and then having the answer within the question. [laughs]

BRANNON: Well, one way I thought we could start is by talking about how we met. I was a student at university, and you were a visiting artist, so that would have been in 1998 . . .

GILLICK: You were then in your second year at Columbia.

BRANNON: I believe it was my first year. I remember I had already given up painting and wasn’t sure what to do next. I was making those “installations” of office spaces. And you were the first person who I didn’t need to defend what I was making to. Most of the faculty and students didn’t even consider that kind of work art.

GILLICK: It was really obvious to me that the questions or problems that you were having with art were interesting. They seemed to be positive problems.

BRANNON: Good problems to have . . .

GILLICK: Yeah. But it was very hard for me because I’d always resisted teaching as a job. I liked the idea of being there and being connected, but I was very irresponsible, in the sense that I would look for certain people who were interesting . . . At that time, you were the most interesting person there—maybe because you were having the same productive problems that I was having.

BRANNON: So now you’re on the verge of your first major U.S. retrospective in Chicago and, of course, you’re representing Germany in the -Venice Biennale. I think this is something we should talk about because it teases the idea of what it means to be mid-career. What will looking backward  mean for you? There are definitely expectations, both personal and public. And then it’s also inevitable that certain backlashes await you . . .

GILLICK: How about just tolerance and warm acceptance? I’m a really tolerant person who accepts lots of things. [laughs] Philippe Parreno and I used to say this to one another: “It’s not a competition.” It’s true that my generation has tried to get into situations in orderto avoid critique. One of the phrases that used toget knocked around a lot was the notion of the “non-critiqueable,” which was the idea that you could temporarily avoid that moment of judgment. I mean, the fact is that the show in
Chicago and the one in Venice are both a continuation of what I’ve been doing, except that they’ll be viewed more by people who haven’t thought about the work very much, or who feel quite correctly that someone is telling them that they ought to take the work seriously, or that it’s -supposed to be good. What’s funny is doing interviews in Germany. They’ve mostly been very nice and earnest and serious, but two of the questions I’ve been asked have really stood out. One is, “What makes you the best?” That was a question I got from the evening newspaper in Munich. Another question from a newspaper was, “When you win the Golden Lion for Germany, how will you feel?” And I thought these two questions perfectly sum up the situation I’m in—because, of course, my work has been an elaborate attempt to avoid questions like, “What makes you so good?” or “What is the idea behind the work?” They’re the wrong questions, in a way. The question of how you might feel in terms of winning the Golden Lion and those kinds of things is completely irrelevant. Which is not to say that when Bruce Nauman wins the Golden Lion for the u.s. he’ll feel any different—he’ll also feel like he just does his work and looks after his horses and has been trying to quietly do the right thing for the last 40 years . . .

BRANNON: I guess it’s very revealing of who I am that, as an artist, I generally focus on my critics—of which I’m probably the harshest.

GILLICK: I know—me too. I never believe people who say that they don’t read the stuff. I read everything. I read a snide five-line exhibition summation in Time Out. I read all of it . . . I’m going to get us some more wine.

BRANNON: Is there a pause button on this recorder?

GILLICK: No, we don’t need to pause it. I’ll be right back . . . We’ve just got to make sure the red light is still on.

BRANNON: Can I record you from there? No.

GILLICK: [from a distance] Probably not. You okay for a drink?