Rodney Graham / Liam Gillick
01 Apr - 14 May 2011
On exhibition in the Showroom on the ground floor of the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery are the works of the Canadian artist Rodney Graham (*1949) and the British artist Liam Gillick.
Rodney Graham, who has been closely associated with the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery since the middle of the 1980s, is an artist distinguished not least by his versatility. He works in the widest diversity of techniques and materials – drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, photography, video and even musical composition – in order to realize his artistic vision, mostly in an original manner and with witty irony, while the theme may be anything from mundane to intellectual. This is how he himself describes his exhibited freestanding kinetic sculpture “Mini Rotary Psycho Opticon”:
“The work is a kind of readymade—a replica of a 10 ( high) by 12 (wide) by 2 foot (deep) freestanding kinetic op-art sculpture used as a mechanized back-drop for an early 1970’s Belgian television show on which the band Black Sabbath appeared performing their song ‘Paranoid”. I will be using this device as a backdrop for my band performance in NY and perhaps Glasgow and London, and I hope to shoot a video using the sculpture. The work comprises a large spinning disc behind a wall with five holes cut in it. The disc contains five discs (each containing a black and white op-art pattern) which are visible through these holes while the disc spins, creating a crude ‘psychedelic’ optical effect. I am having the apparatus designed to be pedal-powered by a bicyclist. The work will have a high finish and will be interactive. In an exhibition context viewers will be able to operate the machine.”
The writing on the wall – a quote from Karl Marx’s “Capital” – reads, in silvery stainless steel letters,“Their Faces Whitening into a Stonelike Torpor”. Like Rodney Graham, Liam Gillick does not stick to just one particular genre but distinguishes himself through his extreme artistic diversity: sculptures, objects and installations in aluminium, particle board and coloured Plexiglas, textual graphics like the one shown here, murals, literary and musical pieces all belong to Liam Gillick’s repertoire. Ever since the 1980s he has been developing his conceptual art ideas, which are not without minimalist tendencies reminiscent of Donald Judd, Barnett Newman or Piet Mondrian. In 2009 Liam Gillick designed the German Pavilion at the 53rd Biennale in Venice and was honoured by a large solo exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn in 2010.
Rodney Graham, who has been closely associated with the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery since the middle of the 1980s, is an artist distinguished not least by his versatility. He works in the widest diversity of techniques and materials – drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, photography, video and even musical composition – in order to realize his artistic vision, mostly in an original manner and with witty irony, while the theme may be anything from mundane to intellectual. This is how he himself describes his exhibited freestanding kinetic sculpture “Mini Rotary Psycho Opticon”:
“The work is a kind of readymade—a replica of a 10 ( high) by 12 (wide) by 2 foot (deep) freestanding kinetic op-art sculpture used as a mechanized back-drop for an early 1970’s Belgian television show on which the band Black Sabbath appeared performing their song ‘Paranoid”. I will be using this device as a backdrop for my band performance in NY and perhaps Glasgow and London, and I hope to shoot a video using the sculpture. The work comprises a large spinning disc behind a wall with five holes cut in it. The disc contains five discs (each containing a black and white op-art pattern) which are visible through these holes while the disc spins, creating a crude ‘psychedelic’ optical effect. I am having the apparatus designed to be pedal-powered by a bicyclist. The work will have a high finish and will be interactive. In an exhibition context viewers will be able to operate the machine.”
The writing on the wall – a quote from Karl Marx’s “Capital” – reads, in silvery stainless steel letters,“Their Faces Whitening into a Stonelike Torpor”. Like Rodney Graham, Liam Gillick does not stick to just one particular genre but distinguishes himself through his extreme artistic diversity: sculptures, objects and installations in aluminium, particle board and coloured Plexiglas, textual graphics like the one shown here, murals, literary and musical pieces all belong to Liam Gillick’s repertoire. Ever since the 1980s he has been developing his conceptual art ideas, which are not without minimalist tendencies reminiscent of Donald Judd, Barnett Newman or Piet Mondrian. In 2009 Liam Gillick designed the German Pavilion at the 53rd Biennale in Venice and was honoured by a large solo exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn in 2010.