#135: Liam Gillick and Gelatin

We are thrilled to show the Deutschlandpremiere of  Stinking Dawn a film by
Liam Gillick and Gelatin.

In 2019, Liam Gillick and Gelatin took over the Kunsthalle Wien and turned it into a film set composed of massive polystyrene blocks, stacked into monumental structures – complete with a mausoleum and nightclub. The resulting movie is a radical, improvised collective project that tells the story of four narcissists battling their own desires. Stinking Dawn creates a miniature civilization with a baroque corporeality. It is a fight between autonomy and the rise of the new right; freedom and repression. ‘Stinking Dawn’ is darkly humorous, transgressive and political. An unruly, cinematic work in its own right – and a cinematic experience unlike any other.

The film: four pathetic snobs and entrepreneurs (Gelatin) try to keep afloat in a “post-leftist” capitalist dystopia. Ali, Florian, Tobias and Wolfgang have clearly defined life paths. Art entrepreneur, furniture maker, mausoleum builder and lingerie producer. They spend their spare time writing and performing music with their friends.

Manipulated by a shadowy nightclub owner (Liam Gillick) with links to the “new right” they are lured into lives of narcissism and delusion. Visiting his club together one night they realize their true desires have been stolen and a new soundtrack of envy and boredom has taken over. A desperate battle ensues, as their lost desires take physical form and wreak revenge on the world.

The nightclub owner stands calmly in the center of the chaos as we witness the erasure of ego, hope and life during the stunning destruction of the film set. A cinematic Armageddon performed with stark, sinewy intensity.

Written and directed by artists Gelatin and Liam Gillick, Stinking Dawn is a shocking, beautiful and darkly comic film that asks serious questions about how we can survive in a society that constantly turns us against ourselves.

Stinking Dawn
Liam Gillick and Gelatin
Austria, 2022, 1 hour 32 minutes
English

Directors: Liam Gillick, Ali Janka, Florian Reither, Tobias Urban, Wolfgang Ganther
Script: Liam Gillick
Director of Photography: Cristian Manzutto, Till Megerle
Editing: Kolbeinn Hugi, Gelatin
Sound mixing: Chris Janka
Music: Artjom Astrov

Liam Gillick is an artist based in New York. His work exposes the dysfunctional aspects of a modernist legacy in terms of abstraction and architecture when framed within a globalized, neo-liberal consensus, and extends into structural rethinking of the exhibition as a form.

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 twenty five 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, Louise Lawler, Adam Pendleton and the band New Order, in a series of concerts in Manchester, Turin and Vienna.

He has produced a number of short films since the late 2000s which address the construction of the creative persona in light of the enduring mutability of the contemporary artist as a cultural figure. Margin Time (2012) The Heavenly Lagoon (2013) and Hamilton: A Film by Liam Gillick (2014). The book Industry and Intelligence: Contemporary Art Since 1820 was published by Columbia University Press in March 2016. Liam Gillick co-starred in Joanna Hogg’s acclaimed movie Exhibition (2013). Stinking Dawn is his first feature film as director.

Gelatin is like a salad. It grows on a field of possibilities. Every member of Gelatin is like a leave, growing over and into each other like a salad. Sometimes the folds are very complex, sometimes simple manifolds. Gelatin met through work. Their works crumble out like earth between the leaves. The salad sometimes is blue, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, and sometimes rotten.

Gelatin are four Vienna-based artists. They began exhibiting internationally in 1993. Gelatin’s practice incorporates the codes of relational aesthetics, their invented sculptural language and approach that is anarchic and irreverent. Humour and logic, as well as chaotic precision, are key instruments in the conception of new works. Their art draws a line from the insular and individual to the open-ended and collective, from the overtly erotic to the sublimated joy of togetherness. Often museum visitors become part of their performances, which aim at transforming the audience into a community.

Gelatin has exhibited internationally in institutions including the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; the Fondazione Prada, Milan; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kunsthaus Bregenz; Kunsthalle Krems; and the 21er Haus, Vienna. Their work was included in Manifesta 11 in Zurich, the 49th and 54th Venice Biennale, the 1st Moscow Biennale, the Aichi Triennale, the Gwangju Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial and EXPO 2000.

In 2003, they released the road movie GRAND MARQUIS of which Videoart at Midnight showed Part 1 within geletin and friends in 2009, togehter with Marc Aschenbrenner, Jochen Dehn and Knut Klaßen.