Announcing Lisson Gallery's participation in West Bund 2020
23 October 2020
Lisson Gallery is pleased to return to West Bund Art & Design in November 2020. The gallery will show a focused presentation of works by gallery artists Richard Deacon, Ryan Gander, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Jason Martin, Julian Opie, Bernard Piffaretti, Joanna Pousette-Dart and Stanley Whitney.
A highlight of Lisson Gallery’s presentation will be Richard Deacon’s upright form in pale bentwood, Under the Weather #5 (2019). Standing 3 meters tall, the sculpture represents the apotheosis of the British artist’s two-decade-long mastery of the various techniques involved in wood steaming, manipulation and construction, with only the most unobtrusive nodes of joinery completing the object’s soaring, shelter-like structure and revealing the techniques of its manufacture. Alongside this, a new mirrored steel work by Anish Kapoor also explores the manipulation and potential of materials. In Mipa 5 and Oriental Blue satin (2020), the colour transforms from an iridescent blue to reflective steel, illustrating Kapoor’s exuberance for colour, and its potential to evoke physical and emotional depth.
Always exploring different techniques both cutting edge and ancient, Julian Opie plays with ways of seeing through reinterpreting the vocabulary of everyday life. To coincide with Opie’s solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery Shanghai, opening 6 November, for the fair Opie will present a new relief work Old Street, May 8 (2020). This dual portrait depicts two figures mid stride. Distinctly individual and yet universal, they recall the anonymity omnipresent in modern city life. Julian Opie will also be featured in the Jing'an International Sculpture Project, alongside Lisson Gallery artists Richard Long and Pedro Reyes.
The booth will also feature paintings by New York based abstract painters Joanna Pousette-Dart and Stanley Whitney. A large Stanley Whitney painting titled The Poet’s Way (2020) is a stacked composition of numerous saturated colour fields, each has a spontaneous dialogue with the other, as one might experience in free verse poetry, or a jazz composition. Whitney notes, “I have to let the colour take me wherever it takes me…The idea is that colour cannot be controlled and that it has total freedom.” Joanna Pousette-Dart’s shaped panel paintings take their form and inspiration from a variety of sources, including Mayan and American Indian art, as well as Chinese landscape paintings and calligraphy. Untitled, Blue (2020) consists of interior forms which resemble landscapes and spheres, fine brush strokes echo the shape of the panel, and reverberate within the composition.
