Liam Gillick, Adam Pendleton, Adam Pendleton, Liam Gillick / EVA PRESENHUBER, New York

3 Nov – 22 Dec 2018

EVA PRESENHUBER, New York

Our ideas are fragmented – events in the day – deconstructed and recomposed. They take place alongside everything else. We want to contribute, to fly with the movement. Are we primarily on top of history or in front of it? Insisting on language as an unavoidably present, even transcendental ambiguity, refusing both the limits of representation and the critical void of abstraction. They insist on being read. They do not speak clearly.

Our ideas are singular – a void in the night – consolidated and broken apart. They take place in a vacuum. We don’t want to participate and instead sink endlessly. Are we primarily underneath history or behind it? Insisting on silence as an unavoidably continual, even concrete precision, refusing to give up representation and embracing the critical void of abstraction. They insist on being absorbed into the context. They speak clearly.

This exhibition brings together two artists working in parallel. The work of Liam Gillick and Adam Pendleton operates within an understanding that forms of abstraction cannot evade the contradictions of history and the enduring pains of the present.

By destroying the abstract via making it concrete, the ambient and the temporary are heightened and become an enduring associative abstraction that replaces the lack in the artwork. Tackling the job of producing something concrete through a process of abstraction neither reproduces abstraction nor does it provide us with anything truly autonomous. It produces a lack and points towards further potentially endless processes of abstraction.

Bringing together new paintings, prints, wall graphics, and films the exhibition is a continuation of the artists’ mutual respect for each other’s practice.

Images > Liam Gillick Adam Pendleton / Adam Pendleton Liam Gillick, Eva Presenhuber, NY, 2018. Ph: Matt Grubb.