Liliane Lijn: Light Years at the Soane

Associated media

4-26 November 2011

The fascinating architectural and sculptural works of kinetic artist Liliane Lijn will be on display at Sir John Soane’s Museum, 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, from 4 to 26 November 2011

The exhibition, to be held in collaboration with Riflemaker, will include Lijn’s seminal Floating Gardens of Rock City (1970), where she playfully garlands an image of the skyscrapers of Manhattan with flowers and foliage, her Breathing Tower (1971), an architectural proposal for the Hayward Gallery consisting of a ziggurat-like tower that would use the ebb and flow of the Thames to expand and contract, and the atmospheric In the Valley of Darkness (1973), a grouping of ceremonial pillars capped by prisms that recall the axial geometries of constructivism.

Born in 1939 in New York, Lijn moved to Paris in 1959 where she became part of the post-war Surrealist Circle.  Here she also later found inspiration in the company of the Nouveau Realistes, including Yves Klein and the sculptor Jean Tinguely.  In 1966 she moved to London and now divides her time between London and Umbria.

Lijn uses highly original combinations of industrial materials and artistic processes and describes her work as: “a constant dialogue between opposites.  My sculptures use light and motion to transform themselves from solid to void, opaque to transparent, formal to organic.”

As well as examples of Lijn’s sculptural work from the 1970’s, some of her more recent kinetic light sculptures will be on display, including an installation of the rotating Three Line Koan (2008)in the Museum’s crypt and one of her Poemdrums, which use concentric, rotating drums with laser cut inscriptions, emitting coloured light, where Lijn explains: ‘words and letters, illuminated from within, become dislocated, in an interplay of meaning and light.’

Tim Knox, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, explains: “Like Soane, Liliane Lijn is fascinated by light, movement and new technology, and we are delighted to be bringing a number of her engaging architectural and sculptural works to our historic interiors.

“Lijn was one of the early kinetic conceptual artists and is considered to be the first cosmic artist as a result of her space art which came out of a NASA funded residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory.  Her work is as diverse as it is exuberant but our Light Years exhibition here at the Soane will focus on her sculptural pieces, graphic art and utopian architectural propositions, which blur the lines between sculpture, architecture and conceptual art

“Through these works, Lijn aims to turn people from their everyday preoccupations to an involvement with cosmic rhythms, earth, sky, wind, sun, sound and light – the things they are made of.”

Other works by Lijn to be displayed at the Soane this November include: her Whirling Wind Tower (1970), an aluminium conical tower intended to be 200 feet high which would be rotated by the wind, creating music and a kaleidoscope of light; and the centre of the Breakfast Room will host her Crystal Cluster (1972)prism sculpture, a piece intended for the contemplation of a solitary collector.

From 7 November 2011, Liliane Lijn will also be exhibiting her Stardust installation at Riflemaker, which resulted from her residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory in California in 2005.

Lijn will also feature in Tate Britain’s forthcoming exhibition of conceptual artists Gallery One, New Vision Centre, Signals and Indica, opening 24 October 2011 and as part of the Henry Moore Institute’s United Enemies exhibition of sculpture in 1960’s and 1970’s Britain (1 December 2011 to 11 March 2012).

For more information about Liliane Lijn: Light Years, visit www.soane.org <http://www.soane.org> , call 020 7405 2107 or visit the museum itself at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP.