The curator of the German Pavilion, Nicolaus Schafhausen, who is also director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, has announced Liam Gillick as the artist appointed to represent Germany at next year’s Venice Biennale.
Schafhausen commented, “Through his need to play with the complexity of the contemporary terrain, Gillick has provided models of thought that are not merely binary. He has operated in parallel to known models of work – critic, designer and artist. And this has permitted him to provoke new questions without the necessity to offer simple solutions.”
Gillick and Schafhausen, who have collaborated since the late ‘80s, are planning several events that will take place in Germany, Europe and the United States between November 2008 and May 2009.
Gillick, born in 1964, and currently living between London and New York, has gained a prominent role within the contemporary art scene through constant collaborations with other artists, writers, architects and designers. His latest shows have been in Rotterdam, Zurich and Munich and, among the forthcoming, are group exhibitions at the StedelijkMuseum in Amsterdam and at the GuggenheimMuseum in New York.