Lisson Gallery's presentation at 2021 edition of West Bund Art & Design
20 October 2021
Lisson Gallery’s presentation at West Bund Art & Design 2021 brings a dynamic selection of artworks to Shanghai by a range of the gallery’s artists. Following the first solo presentation of work by Hélio Oiticica in China at Lisson’s Shanghai space, the booth will feature early gouache on cardboard works by the Brazilian artist, as well as new painting and sculpture by Stanley Whitney, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Christopher Le Brun, Carmen Herrera and Julian Opie, among others.
Celebrated for her striking use of colour and the formal simplicity of her work, Carmen Herrera began devising sculptural pieces that expanded on the compositions in her two dimensional works from the late 1960s. Many of these – which would become the artist’s series of monumental Estructuras – were only realised in the past decade, among them Gemini (Red) (1971/2019). Presented for the first time at West Bund, this iteration of Gemini is also the first to be created in this intense red colourway.
Similarly focused in their consideration of colour and spatial representation, Hélio Oiticica’s early experimentations in gouache on cardboard are noted for their geometric energy, in which highly organised compositions fold, flip, reverse and transpose the same forms. Two examples of these works, Untitled (Grupo Frente) (1955) and Untitled (Metaesuqema) (1958) will be presented at West Bund, complementing a recent exhibition of the artist’s Metaesquema drawings, sculpture and film at the gallery’s Shanghai space. These will be shown alongside two small-scale watercolour paintings by celebrated Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong, created by the artist during his extended stay in New York over the Spring of 2020 due to the pandemic.
Lisson Gallery’s booth will also highlight a 1998 work, Ochre with Dull Red, from a series by Peter Joseph known as ‘The Border Paintings’, alongside Anish Kapoor’s Apple Red and Lime mix to Purple Candy Satin (2019) – a large-scale sculpture from the artist’s ‘mirror’ series in which warm orange hues meld in a space-distorting gradient. In addition, Jason Martin’s Untitled Silver IV (2017) translates his performative processes of manipulating paint into a cast silver work that sits between painting and sculpture, and Djurberg & Hans Berg’s Worship (Aubergine on Mattress) (2016) is a sculpture from the artists’ video Worship (2016), a claymation exploring desire, lust and greed.
The presentation continues with recent work by two artists who have pursued unique methods of painting over their decades-long careers. An evocative curved wood panel painting by Joanna Pousette-Dart, Untitled. Black, White, Blue (2018/2019) is shown alongside a new suite of paintings by Stanley Whitney, including two oil on linen works from his Roma series, Roma 30 and Roma 31 (both 2021).