Alan Charlton and Liam Gillick

Alan Charlton and Liam Gillick both engage with the legacy of modernism, creating works that push the possibilities of abstraction while remaining rooted in material reality.

Charlton works primarily with painting, while Gillick uses a range of approaches including writing, music, film and sculpture. Both artists explore the exhibition itself as a form.

For this exhibition, Charlton presents three paintings — square, round and triangular — whose basic shapes provide a grounding geometry for the show. Opposite them, Gillick presents three new “elevation” sculptures made from painted aluminium and coloured Plexiglas, composed of joined panels to form free-standing works. He has also created a new wall-based “production cycle” installed in a small room apart from the main gallery.

Charlton has been a significant influence on Gillick. His rigorous, serious and consistent practice offered Gillick a framework for exploring his own relationship to modernism’s legacy. Both artists produce work that finds a distinctive beauty in form shaped through context, while sharing an avoidance of illusion and a commitment to the real.

While Charlton tests the limits of painting, Gillick works with the language of secondary structures — screens, false ceilings and wall systems — introducing a new abstract syntax for the present.

This is Charlton’s ninth exhibition at Alfonso Artiaco and Gillick’s fourth.