The Stillpass Collection

Liam Gillick is an artist who creates and structures spaces. Exterior Concourse Diagram (trad. Celtic circa 200 A.D. arranged by Liam Gillick) (2000) is a wall painting with a bold, multi-colored geometric pattern, shifting between graphic design and abstract painting. The pattern escapes formalist readings as it seems to offer a social function to its surroundings. Borrowing the term “concourse” in its title, the work evokes a meeting point, and explores how social activity leaves a trace on its environment. The diagram thus appropriates and simultaneously redefines the space it inhabits.

collectorspace presents the Stillpass Collection with Exterior Concourse Diagram…, which is prominently painted on one of the exterior facades of the collector’s home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Andy Stillpass has been negotiating spaces and spatial interventions with artists since the late 1980s when he first started commissioning artworks for his family house. As artists were asked to respond to continuously accumulating artworks installed there—often by their own close friends—, the house over time turned into an elaborate art installation itself, with many cross-referential stories and relationships embedded within its walls and surrounding garden. Stillpass’s collecting practice exemplifies how a private collection can function as an input to the creative process.

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Liam Gillick (b. 1964) is an artist based in New York. His work encompasses a wide range of media and disciplines, including sculpture, film, writing, graphic design, and architectural interventions. Gillick has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including a survey of work from the 1990s titled Liam Gillick: From 199A to 199B at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum in 2012. He represented Germany for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Gillick has taught at Columbia University in New York since 1997 and the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College since 2008. Public collections include: Government Art Collection, UK; Arts Council, UK; Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Andy Stillpass is an art collector based in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began commissioning artwork for his family house in 1987, and has been collecting contemporary art since then. The collection includes works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joel Otterson, Philippe Parreno, Rob Pruitt, Andrea Zittel, among many others. Stillpass is on the Board of Directors of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and Artists Space, New York.

Image: Exterior Concourse Diagram (trad. Celtic circa 200 A.D., arranged by Liam Gillick), 2000, The Stillpass Collection. Courtesy Andy Stilpass.

Video: Philip Dolin, Particle Productions, New York