Selected Works

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Lisson Gallery is pleased to present a selection of significant works, ranging from historical works to new painting and sculpture.

The presentation includes a rare 1984 painting by Stanley Whitney titled Portrait of a Dream. This early work foreshadows the gridded format for which the artist is best known, while formally embracing the gestural markings of ovals and open, expressive lines. Notably, Whitney painted in pastel colors during the mid-1980s, a departure from the bold, deeper hues of his recent work. The title is a direct homage to Jackson Pollock and his iconic, abstracted self-portrait, Portrait and a Dream (1953). Also part of this exhibition is the 1949 Carmen Herrera work Les Liens. This acrylic on linen canvas painting served as the beginning of the artist’s Paris Period, 1948-1954, which was defined by international travel and exposure to foreign movements such as the Bauhaus and Russian Suprematism. This led to Herrera abandoning figuration completely and beginning her life’s “quest” to find the “simplest of pictorial resolutions”. Les Liens fractures the picture plane into distinct ‘places’, creating an architectonic interplay between organicity and geometry.

The display at 508 West 24th Street also features a recent oil and sand painting by Rodney Graham, Untitled (2020), from a recent body of work called the “Painting Problems” which is collaged and derived from previous series and painterly personas created by the artist through splicing together different styles, from Braque and Picasso, to Rodchenko and Fontana. Lee Ufan’s acrylic on canvas, From Point (1982) is another exhibition highlight. Part of the From Point series, the loose, calligraphic dexterity of the brushstrokes in this work reflect Lee’s increasing interest in painting as a visible structure of invisible forces: his touch activates what he calls “the living composition of the empty spaces.”