Liam Gillick
curated by Pauline Schellmann

Schellmann Art's 17-year-long collaboration with Liam Gillick spans a wide range of works, including prints, wall installations, aluminium objects and even furniture. As we were preparing the release of his newest editions – two separate series of aluminium wall objects, Replicated Revision and Equal Quarters – and the artist was preparing his new show at Pergamon Museum Berlin, we had a chat about his artistic practice as a whole, his relationship to the medium of editions and reflected on almost two decades of working together. 

“Replicated Revision is probably one of the most minimalistic works I’ve ever done. Revision means you’re taking something that you already did and you’re checking it, revising it, changing it, looking at the information again. Like at school, when you’re doing your revision, you’re going back through your notes to see what you understand. And that’s exactly what this work is.”
The artist explains that he is referring to a work he created for an exhibition at Esther Schipper Berlin in the mid-1990s: “For this exhibition, I wanted to express an abstract idea related to discourse and exchange without being didactic, without writing it down, without describing it. I simply wanted to do something that created the conditions for discourse and exchange to happen. So, I went to a German home improvement store and bought small pieces of aluminium angles and screwed them together to create a frame that I then hung from the ceiling. When standing underneath it, it is like a designated meeting point, a ‘Treffpunkt’. It is a place that has no function but it describes the space.”

“Replicated Revision looks like an elegant minimalist artwork but it’s really just taking this basic form of postmodern construction and trying to do something with it that is just enough – that is enough to articulate a form and colour by using the least possible means. But it’s not minimalism, it’s almost a step further, because it’s not pure. It’s weird because I never did that in a show in quite such a straightforward way. But I can do it with Jörg [Ed: Schellmann] because somehow I always think of the work that I do for him in relation to all the other things he’s done and I think about them in regards to that history.”

The artist recounts that he has always appreciated and known about the medium of editions, even referred to them as a student and bought his very own Jenny Holzer edition for a mere USD 100 when he was younger. He likes the socio-economic positioning of editions that allows more people to engage with and gain access to artworks. 
Liam Gillick's interest lies in production, not consumption. To him, the idea that his editioned artworks are vastly different from his so-called unique works is old-fashioned. “There is no real difference, apart from the fact that there are more of them.” 
The artist likes questioning and flipping pricing, status, and value on its head: “For me, it’s a deliberate act.”

“Working with you and producing all these editions involves one of two things: either I’m experimenting, trying something new that is related to but a progression from something, or – and this is the case with the new works – I’m using it as a way to make a point. I go back to the basic principles.” The artist continues: “Because the status of the objects when they’re produced and how they sit in this kind of bible of artists and editions allows them to float free from the normal control systems of a gallery or a museum. Going back to the basic principles without the pressure of that being a whole exhibition, a whole project. It means the works can be very fundamental and really re-state my desires.”
When I ask what he means by 'bible of artists and editions', he explains that when he works on an edition with Schellmann Art, he is very much aware of the artists we have worked with and whose works are documented in our catalogue raisonné alongside his own works. This, he says, "creates an interesting relationship with artists you can't meet but are somehow connected with".

Reflecting on his various collaborations with Schellmann Art, the artist explains that while he had always been fascinated by the concept of editions and their 'in-between' status whereby they "function as fully operative, fully functional artworks yet exist in this multiple form", he appreciated Jörg's approach to encourage artists to create editions that were ontologically as close as possible to any of their other works. "The Donald Judd editions are actually Donald Judds, they’re just slightly different from his unique works. This affects meaning. I’m not quite sure how, but it just does." 
He pauses before elaborating that while affordable prints can exist parallel but completely separate to so-called unique works, editions that more closely approximate artists’ major works can blur the conventional line between the status of unique versus editioned art. He jokes: "I think, in a sense, Schellmann has disrupted the traditional understanding of meaning and value. This should be your new corporate statement: disrupting meaning and value since 1969."