Liam Gillick + Jonathan Monk
Cool Your Jets
February 23–April 30, 2016
Opening: Tuesday, February 23, 6pm
Quartz Studio
Via Giulia di Barolo, 18/D
10124 Turin
Italy
T +39 338 4290085
F +39 011 8264640
info [at] quartzstudio.net
Quartz Studio is pleased to present the exhibition Cool Your Jets, a collaboration between New York-based Liam Gillick and Berlin-based Jonathan Monk. The exhibition physically and semantically plays with the idea of “slippage.” The two artists’ work converses at a distance, working on two horizontal planes. The first plane is the floor, which Jonathan Monk altered with a pile of fifty soccer balls, whose leather hexagons echo the colors of the space’s cement floor. The second one is by Liam Gillick, a phrase on the wall in his preferred black font, “Cool your jets,” with a meaning somewhere between a piece of advice and a warning. The artists exchanged a series of emails about how balls and jets might interact, to which both Monk’s installation and Gillick’s phrase allude quite specifically. Some questions emerged, extrapolated from different web sites about the French-Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato. Neither Monk nor Gillick have come up with answers, as they are already in a way contained in the questions themselves.
“When it comes to production and activity within the community, work as such deserves certain scrutiny: to what purpose, for whom?
Life, health and love are precarious—why should work be an exception?
How does one approach a system so coded and at the same time loaded with meaning?
Something changed in the life and society that interrogates subjectivity: what happens, what’s happened, what will happen?
The event returns the world to us as a ‘matter of choice,’ and subjectivity as a ‘crossroad of praxis.’ What is happening to me(us) there?”
In the long-distance conversation between Gillick and Monk, these socioeconomic questions are in counterpoint to quotes from Johan Cruijff, a renowned retired Dutch player and coach.
“There’s only one moment in which you can arrive in time. If you’re not there, you’re either too early or too late.
There is only one ball, so you need to have it.
If you have the ball you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don’t have the ball you must make it as small as possible.
The series of quotes on the topic end with a disarming declaration by Andrea Pirlo, a retired midfielder for Juventus and the Italian national team, now in the States with New York City: I don’t feel pressure… I don’t give a shit. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin, sleeping and playing PlayStation. That evening I went and won the World Cup.”
Liam Gillick (Aylesbury, UK, 1964) deploys multiple forms to expose the new ideological control systems that emerged at the beginning of the 1990s. Gillick’s work has been included in numerous important exhibitions including Documenta and the Venice, Berlin and Istanbul Biennales—representing Germany in 2009 in Venice. Solo museum exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London. Gillick’s work is held in many important public collections including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Over the last 25 years Gillick has also been a prolific writer and critic of contemporary art—contributing to Artforum, October, frieze and e-flux Journal. He is the author of a number of books including a volume of his selected critical writing. High profile public works include the British Government Home Office (Interior Ministry) building in London and the Lufthansa Headquarters in Frankfurt. Throughout this time, Gillick has extended his practice into experimental venues and collaborative projects with artists including Philippe Parreno, Lawrence Weiner and Louise Lawler. He lives and works in New York City.
Jonathan Monk (Leicester, UK, 1969) often appropriates ideas, works, and strategies from conceptualist and minimalist artists of the ’60s and ’70s. Monk’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including in solo shows at CAC Malagá, W139 in Amsterdam, Artpace in San Antonio, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Tramway in Glasgow, Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Centre d’Art Contemporain in Neuchatel, Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and Kunstverein Hannover. Group exhibitions are numerous and include the Taipei Biennial, Berlin Biennale, Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Prague Biennale, and Panama Biennial. In 2012, Monk was honored with the Prix du Quartier des Bains in Geneva. His works have been exhibited in many museums and international collections, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Norton Collection, Santa Monica, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Statens Museum für Kunst, Copenhagen, and Tate Modern, London. He lives and works between Berlin and Rome.
Quartz Studio kindly thanks Giulia Mainetti and Altofragile, Milan for the support to the project.
