NYAB Event - Liam Gillick "Discussion Bench Platforms, A ‘Volvo’ Bar + Everything Good Goes"

Liam Gillick "Discussion Bench Platforms, A ‘Volvo’ Bar + Everything Good Goes"

Casey Kaplan

This event has ended.

Discussion Bench Platforms are a series of structures that continue the artist’s interest in the legacy of applied modernism and the tension between functional and aesthetic constructions. Powder-coated aluminum benches accompany a sequence of new discussion platforms. The function of the discussion platform as a designated space for thought is amplified by this pragmatic addition.
On the walls and windows of the gallery, sixteen new prints present a narrative derived from the first scene of Gillick’s play A Volvo Bar, that was the ‘short scenario’ part of his retrospective, “Three Perspectives and a short Scenario”, first performed at the Kunstverein München. Gillick’s eight-act play adapts the exhibition space as a stage on which social phenomena of a post-industrial society are played out, presenting a core aspect in Gillick’s work - the negotiation of models of communality. The prints here combine early woodcut imagery from pre-industrial Europe with the opening lines of the play. Everything Good Goes was first presented at the exhibition of the Vincent Awards at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, 2008. Earlier that year, Gillick was in the process of preparing and editing a series of texts, clips and recordings derived from a series of lectures presented at unitednationsplaza, Berlin in 2006. While reviewing the content of the lectures the artist built a 3D computer model of the set, a factory, from the film Tout va Bien (Everything Goes Good), 1972, directed by French political activists and filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin.