2012
15 different boards
4 copies per board
Signed certificate
15 different boards
4 copies per board
Signed certificate
Each board:
59×39,5 cm
23.2×15.6 in.
59×39,5 cm
23.2×15.6 in.
Oak and oil paint
Hand carved
Hand carved
This edition of wooden “printing plates” is a parallel manifestation of Liam Gillick’s general project “Pourquoi Travailler ?”. Starting with a small paperback, the project has developed from offset to letterpress to wooden plates bearing lightly colored and ready-to-print images – all manufactured after the previous publications have already been printed. These are the times. A handmade German woodcut of the sixteenth century is appropriated by Gillick, who adjusts the images he finds on the internet with Adobe Illustrator to fit his texts, and in parallel configurations often obscure to the viewer.
This juxtaposition of woodcut to text occurs in the offset paperback Gillick published, as well as in the eponymous and considerably more labour–intensive work produced by Three Star Books. But here, in the woodblock print version, there is only the image. For the “sculptural” edition of the book, Gillick has simply taken images from his own publication, sent these to be hand-carved in Vietnam, in a positive and not negative version (as opposed to printing practice), and then tinted. These are images in which the woodblock plates are the final product, and printing no longer follows the logic of the hand. Why work, when one can delegate, or is that the real work in the end?
This juxtaposition of woodcut to text occurs in the offset paperback Gillick published, as well as in the eponymous and considerably more labour–intensive work produced by Three Star Books. But here, in the woodblock print version, there is only the image. For the “sculptural” edition of the book, Gillick has simply taken images from his own publication, sent these to be hand-carved in Vietnam, in a positive and not negative version (as opposed to printing practice), and then tinted. These are images in which the woodblock plates are the final product, and printing no longer follows the logic of the hand. Why work, when one can delegate, or is that the real work in the end?
“Pourquoi Travailler ?” — The wood boards installed at Esther Shipper’s gallery, Berlin and at Art Basel.