Coloured shadows in the work of Liam Gillick and Daniel Buren

Liam Gillick in MAK museum Vienna

Liam Gillick has been uses perspex frequently. He creates some interesting slatted structures which interweave panels of perspex, wood or gaps. Reflecting the body of the viewer in parts, allowing it through in others,  I guess it speaks of the use of mirrors in a specific era of art making when artists began to consider the area around their art work. Industrial colour and form also take us back there. They act as partial barriers and containers of space, blocking our route but also suggesting another. Light is allowed to pass through and is also reflected, air is enclosed. People sense the possibility of sliding through a gap but somehow they never seem quite wide enough. Coloured shadows are cast hitting surfaces as sharp definite shades.

 

Daniel Buren at Mudam

I was interested to see this work by Daniel Buren for Mudam in Belgium also using Perspex, referencing the architecture of Leoh Ming Pei and as always speaking of frames - aesthetic, arhchitectural and institutional. I've been interested in Buren's work ever since seeing images of his famous New York piece where the striped flags continue through the gallery and out into the street, hung like washing from a line. They looked to me almost like the infinite reflections that occur when you place two mirrors opposite each other, somehow this perspex continues this thread. 

There seems to be a very strong connection between these artists in how they use this material. Both are concerned with the frame of the institution, the lineage they are making work in and the way the body fits to architecture

Daniel Buren - http://www.mudam.lu/en/expositions/details/exposition/daniel-buren/
Liam Gillick - http://www.caseykaplangallery.com/artists/liam_gillick/01.html