Ryan Gander – The Fallout of Living (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

The work of Ryan Gander is an exercise in polysemy.  The British sculptor continually explores concepts of loose association and interaction in his work, combining disparate elements to form complex relational narratives. Working in a diverse range of media that includes found objects, plexiglass, wood and marble, his pieces blend intimate symbolism with common artifacts, creating pieces rich in interpretive significance on any number of planes.

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Julian Opie – (Installation View), Lisson Gallery

Billed as “the largest single display of his practice to date,” Lisson Gallery is currently exhibiting a broad selection of works from British multi-media artist Julian Opie.   Bending the artist’s fascinations with traditional portraiture and painting through his own aesthetic lens, the show continues Opie’s explorations of modern visual language and its relation to art history.

Julian Opie – (Gallery View), Lisson Gallery

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Jorinde Voigt, Installation view (2012). All images via Lisson Gallery.

Lisson Gallery is currently exhibiting the work of German artist Jorinde Voigt, awarded the 2012 Contemporary Drawing Prize of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Art Foundation. Voigt’s drawings emerge from a sophisticated interweaving of disparate quantitative and qualitative imagery of the everyday life, resulting in a visually arresting analogical fanfare; a glimpse into an entire universe of synchronous possibilities, somewhat—ironically—abridged by the painstakingly minute notations that attest the artist’s experience of production, but so exponentially vast as to be almost completely devoid of fixed meaning.

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Dan Graham, Two 2-Way Mirror Ellipses, One Open, One Closed (2011-2012). All images via Lisson Gallery.

Equal parts graceful and subversive, the pavilion structures of Dan Graham consistently toy with the manufacture and perception of space. Using a combination of mirrors and glass to blur the ideas of internal and external space, Graham invites viewers to participate fully in the physical framework of his pieces while still remaining partially anchored as spectators to their relations with its space. This dichotomy is readily seen in a series of new pavilion structures currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London.

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All photos on site for Art Observed by Aubrey Roemer.

The Armory Show 2012 hosts 228 international exhibitors, “showing work that realizes the fair’s mission of innovation and discovery.” Split between Piers 92 and 94 on the west side of Midtown Manhattan, the show runs March 8–11, with several new programming initiatives and a re-designed floor plan added to the show’s fourteenth edition. Pier 94 is the larger exhibition hall, the Contemporary section featuring mainstay galleries Lisson Gallery, Sean Kelly, Victoria Miro, Kukje Gallery/Tina Kim Gallery, David Zwirner, Sprüth Magers, Gallery Hyundai, and Kaikai Kiki, among many others—including 19 invited Nordic galleries in the ‘Armory Focus’—while the Modern sector on Pier 92 is home to Marlborough Gallery, O’Hara Gallery, Inc., Pace Prints, Peter Findlay, and many more.

Ai Weiwei, Marble Cube at Lisson Gallery

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

The work of Daniel Buren has, for over 40 years, sought to explore the relationship of art and space, using his trademark striped painting technique as a method to emphasize the engagement between art, exhibition space and the viewer.  His current show One Thing To Another, Situated Works at the Lisson Gallery in London, continues this dialogue, exhibiting a number of brightly-colored works that incorporate Buren’s technique into new mediums.

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Allora & Calzadilla, Under Discussion (2005); still. All images courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery.

Collaborative duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s interdisciplinary body of work permeates the realms of sculpture, photography, video, social interventions, and performance, engaging with both art and activism. Now at Lisson Gallery in London is “Vieques Videos 2003–2010,” three video works addressing the island of Vieques, shown together for the first time. From 1941 until 2003 Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, was occupied by the US Military and used as a weapons testing range. A grassroots civil disobedience campaign, led by inhabitants of Vieques, gained international support and led to the eventual evacuation of the military, though environmental and political concerns remain largely unresolved. Informed by and engaging with weighty political, historical, and social issues, Allora & Calzadilla often employ the absurd, creating a more approachable framework for confronting overwhelming material.

Allora & Calzadilla, Half Mast\Full Mast (2010); still.

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Cory Arcangel, Research in Motion (Kinetic Sculpture 6) (2011).
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Following up on his solo exhibition at The Whitney Museum, media artist Cory Arcangel is currently showing at the Lisson Gallery in London. Titled Speakers Going Hammer, the show features a number of pieces previously unseen in the UK, as well as several new works. The New York-based artist first rose to prominence in 2002, with his piece Super Mario Clouds, featuring a hacked Super Nintendo System that had removed all of the graphics from a Super Mario Cartridge save for the blocky, pixilated clouds. Continuing along these lines, Speakers Going Hammer features a hacked basketball game program, titled Self Playing N64 NBA Courtside 2, in which an outdated, video game version of Shaquille O’Neal continually takes and misses free-throws.

Installation view.

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Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases (2009), all images by Soraya Gilanni for Art Observed

AO was on site for the preview of Lisson Gallery‘s major survey show of work by Ai Weiwei. Any reading of the exhibition cannot help but be inflected, if not radically transformed, by the knowledge that the artist’s whereabouts and condition are still unknown after being detained by authorities in Beijing on April 3rd, 2011. The exhibition, which will open to the public on May 13th, coincides with the London display of Ai Weiwei’s Animal/Zodiac heads at Somerset House.

Lisson director Greg Hilty and founder Nicholas Logsdail began the day by addressing the absence of the artist directly. They explained that Lisson Gallery had considered canceling the show, but that the “general consensus” among all involved was that it should “absolutely go ahead” despite the fact that Logsdail described the opening day without the presence of the artist as “mortifying.”

Ai Weiwei, Surveillance Camera (2010)

Weiwei often pushes the boundaries of institutions that exhibit his work, therefore the difficulty of putting on a survey show lies in that the nature of his practice is hard to define. The selection is curtailed to video and sculptural works in a kind of redress of the attention attracted by works like his famous Sunflower Seeds and Template.

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Anish Kapoor, Shooting Into the Corner, via The Telegraph–>

Last week brought the grand opening of Anish Kapoor‘s latest exhibition, his first ever in his native India. Kapoor claims to embrace his Indian heritage but believes that an artist’s identity should be based on their creativity, not nationality. He has in fact been looking for a suitable exhibition space in India for nearly a decade, finally deciding on the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Mehboob Film Studios.

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, via Flickr–>

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Marina Abramović, Portrait with white lamb. 2010. Courtesy the artist, Marco Anelli and Lisson Gallery.

Currently on view at Lisson Gallery London is an exhibition of new and retrospective works by Marina Abramović. The installation showcases videos, photographs, and sculpture, divided in two parts between galleries across the street from one another. In one, her seminal Rhythm series is mounted in its entirety for the first time; in the other, Abramović’s new series Back to Simplicity makes its debut.

Back to Simplicity reveals a somewhat softer side of Abramović: exhausted from her recent 90-day performance at the MoMA New York, the artist returned to nature to renew her energy. Shot in upstate New York, where Abramović intends to open an institute for the preservation of performance art, the recent images are a far cry from the challenging, violent, and provocative work for which Abramović is known. Instead of pills, guns, or other tools of violence, the artist’s new companion is the lamb. As a symbol of innocence, this creature carries with it a gentler, more vulnerable air.

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Marina Abramović. Video still from Confession. 2010. Image courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery.

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I am Sad Leyla by Hussein Chalayan, via Lisson Gallery

My approach has always been interdisciplinary; the new work is an extension of this. There is a certain freedom to working in an art context that has allowed me to further explore the ideas that underpin my work.

-Hussein Chalayan

Currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London is I am Sad Leyla (Ãœzgünüm Leyla) an exhibition presenting an installation and a film piece by Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan. The designer filmed the Turkish Pop Star Sertab Erener performing the classical Turkish song “I am Sad Leyla” with the accompaniment of an Ottoman orchestra. Visitors will find a life-size sculpture of Erener dressed in Chalayan’s updated version of a traditional Turkish costume upon entering the gallery and they will hear the sound of her voice from the film of her singing playing in the next room.

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Artist’s Model Posing For ‘The Old Bugler, Among the Fallen, Battle of Beaune-Roland, 1870’ In The Studio Of An Unknown Military Painter, Paris, 1885 by Rodney Graham, via Hauserwirth

Currently showing at the Lisson Gallery in London, England until July 31, 2010, is a solo exhibition of works by Canadian artist Rodney Graham. Graham is well-known for his schooling in the field of conceptual art, which places the idea of a work of art above the importance of its execution. Graham often creates art out of art; one title alludes to a British horror film by the same name. As a whole, Painter, Poet, Lighthouse Keeper is a versatile and creative exhibit: it contains light boxes, paintings, and short films by Graham. The Lisson Gallery is working with MACBA, Barcelona and Hamburger Kunsthalle to host the exhibit.

Lighthouse Keeper with Lighthouse Model (1955 2010) by Rodney Graham, via Lisson Gallery

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Hedge (2008) by Tony Cragg. All images via Lisson Gallery

Currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London is a major exhibition of works by the British sculptor Tony Cragg. The artist’s first solo show with the gallery took place in 1979, here he presents five new larger works, a selection of smaller works and drawings. The works displayed reflect upon the consistency Cragg has used throughout his career even as he moved from his early assemblages to casting sculptures during the mid-1980s. The resulting works project the forever materialist who easily transforms a simple image into a monumental and powerful form.

Elbow (2010)

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Pile Up Life No.2 (2008) by Tatsuo Miyajima, via Lisson Gallery

Currently on view at the Lisson Gallery in London are new works by Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima. For over twenty years Miyajima has created installations by using LED digital counting devices which continually count from 1-9 or backwards but never employ zero. They seemingly seek to establish a definitive rhythm at once repetitive and experiential, similar to the passing of time. Tatsuo ‘s new work continues to combine  performance with the architecture while also examining the development of life and the effects of large-scale natural disasters.

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Donald Judd, Untitled, in “Boule to Braid” at Lisson Gallery. Via the Telegraph

The Lisson Gallery is hosting “Boule to Braid” through August 15.   The exhibition draws exclusively from the collection of Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson Gallery’s young founder.  Featured are Carl Andre, Paul McCarthy, Donald Judd, Tony Cragg and more.

Related links:
Lisson Gallery – Exhibition – Boule to Braid: curated by Richard Wentworth
Art Sales: dealer who opened Saatchi’s eyes [the Telegraph]
Richard Wentworth on ‘Boule to Braid’ [Interview, artreview.com]
Boule de Braid: Private View with Adrian Searle [Guardian]

Tom Sachs, Supreme Allied Commander Moon Rock Box, in “Boule to Braid” at Lisson Gallery.

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