RCM Galerie Liliane Lijn

Early Work 1961 - 69

RCM Galerie

4th June - 20th July 2015 Wavering Line of Light Far from declining, Paris gained a new cosmopolitanism Guy Brett in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the influx of young artists from Latin America, drawn by the desire to see With this exhibition, Liliane Lijn returns to Paris after an first-hand the work of artists like Mondrian, Brancusi, absence of some twenty years. Self taught as an artist, Vantongerloo and Klein. All this was no doubt below the she originally arrived in this city in the autumn of 1958 radar of the French art establishment of the time, since from Geneva and immediately plunged into the world of the encounters between artists of different nationalities experiment and innovation of the Parisian avant-garde. and cultural backgrounds were of a new and subtle kind, In the first year she was in Paris, Yves Klein staged his and they took place at levels which had been in no way epoch-making exhibition Le Vide (the Void) in the Galerie institutionalised. Iris Clert, and, in the following year, Takis made his first Telemagnetic sculpture. Two years later, Liliane Lijn was One way to look at the diverse nature of experiment making sculptures by drilling into blocks of Perspex, in Paris at that time would be to see it as a multitude producing empty spaces which paradoxically behaved of different kinds of transformation of the traditional like solids in the transparent blocks, causing the light formats of painting and sculpture. Liliane Lijn’s early falling on them to liquefy in the viewer’s gaze. works of around 1961 would exemplify this category, especially her Double Drilling and Inner Space (both 1961), Lijn embraced the Paris of artistic thinking and also the transparent Perspex blocks into which she has drilled to Paris of wild and orgiastic “happenings”, organised (if that create bubbles and cavities in the inaccessible interior. is the right word) by Jean-Jacques Lebel at the end of the These works testify to a fascination with materials, their 1950s, perhaps acting as a psychological release after the properties, and the possibility of a transformation that privations of the war. goes beyond a representation.

It has often been assumed that when the ‘grand narrative While prominent North American artists continued to of modern art’ began to coalesce around the ‘New York adhere to the formats of painting and sculpture as the School’ in the 1950s, Paris lost its pre-eminence as the vehicles of their vanguard movements, European artists international centre of modern art. Younger artists in inherited a legacy of experimentation and the use of Britain, for example, became increasingly fixated on new materials from outside the sphere of art. This can be art movements in the USA, encompassing Abstract traced back to artists like Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Georges Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Vantongerloo – to Moholy’s Light-Space-Modulator (1922- Art, and gave little credence to events in Paris. But 1930) investigating the possibility of light and movement this judgment was crude and simplistic. For one thing as a medium of expression, and to Vantonterloo’s use Paris and New York were not polarised worlds. Robert of a newly invented transparent material, Perspex or Rauschenberg and John Cage had close contacts with Plexiglass (1949-1965). Vantongerloo imported it from Europe. Cage was associated with , a transatlantic the USA to France and welcomed it in ecstatic terms: movement with its roots in Dada. North American writers “Plastic material!!!! What a marvel! It is both physics and James Baldwin, , William Burroughs, Allen chemistry. It’s creation itself” (letter to Lillian Florsheim). Liquid Reflections Multiple, 1969 Ginsberg and lived for periods in Paris. Lijn was inspired by Gysin’s and Burroughs’s ‘cut-ups’ Liliane Lijn has always been identified with the tendency as a liberating literary technique. (On seeing Lijn’s first known as Kinetic Art. It is of course a very broad term, exhibition, Echolights and Vibrographes at the Librairie encompassing expressions ranging from the exuberance Anglaise (1962), Burroughs suggested she use his cut-up of Jean Tinguely’s machines to the austerity of, for text in her Poem Machines). example, the reliefs of identical small tabs in motion

2 3 by Gerhard von Graevenitz. What they do share is the “All material is made of light which has been spent, and invention of a ‘language of movement’, something that the crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and can only be experienced directly and in real time. the shadow belongs to light”. This leads to a further distinction: the difference between merely setting in motion an established formal structure such as geometric abstraction, and inventing a new kind of object which had not existed before. Lijn belongs to this latter tendency within Kinetic Art, when one thinks of the originality of her Poem Machines, her illuminated Koans, her columnar lines of light. The Poem Machines are a brilliant contribution to the movement of concrete, or visual poetry, where letters alternate with abstract pulses as the cylinder revolves. All have a fluid, fresh quality of going beyond a rigid adherence to a formal stylistic system. And yet the strange and fascinating thing about these works is that the geometric forms are not lost or superseded but retained in Lijn’s personal and poetic treatments of the cylinder, the cube, the cone, the circle, the sphere. Plus the triangle and the prism which entered her work in 1963. One has only to think of the beautiful inter-relationship between circle and sphere in Liquid Reflections (1964-66) to appreciate the creativity of this inventiveness.

The Light Columns (beginning 1964) are another example, a wonderful re-invention of industrial materials, taking them from practical usages to create a new, poetic object. As the cylinder is tightly bound with fine copper wire and light is directed upon it, any imperfection or irregularity of the cylinder’s surface is translated into a wavering line of light, ‘real’ although it has no material existence. It’s a ‘vibration’, an energy, which one can discover in the works of many of the artists of the 20th century, who have been interested in cosmic speculation: such as the ‘vibration paintings’ of Jesus Rafael Soto, the vibrating wire in Takis’s telemagnetic constructions, Hélio Oiticica’s Bolides (energy-centres), Liliane Lijn’s ‘words accelerated’ in the Above: Poems Machines, or Sergio Camargo’s white wood reliefs Inner Space, 1961 which respond so subtly to the nuances of ambient light. We reach a position, a confluence, superbly articulated Opposite: by the architect Louis Kahn: Liquid Reflections, 1967-68

4 5 6 7 Above: Red Cylinder, 1964-5 Gold Cylinder, 1964

Preceding pages: Linear Light Column, 1969

8 9 Saturn Two Line Drum, 1965

10 La Lumiere Retourne à sa Source points of spectral light. This has included placing specially Bronaċ Ferran designed heliostats on the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. In this exhibition, the works of light and language by Liliane Lijn bring us face to face with her long-held She also met Dr Andrew Westphal, a leading scientist preoccupation with aspects of the physics of light and working on the Stardust mission, which sent probes phenomenology of space. beyond Mars equipped with a new material called Aerogel, which absorbed and captured remnants of Lijn came to Paris in 1958 to study Art History and interstellar space dust to bring back for analysis. Archaeology at The Sorbonne. After a few months, This material immediately appealed to Lijn as a potential she realised her vocation was to make art. Many of the source of artistic expression and so she began to develop extraordinary works she has made over the last fifty-five her Stardust Ruins series, which led to a major show years are now within collections all over the world. in London in 2008 and considerable press coverage. Having negotiated the transportation of some of this In 2005 Lijn was offered an International Artists fragile material to Europe, she invented a process of Fellowship at the Space Sciences Laboratories, University transforming the Aerogel into intangible lustrous works of California, Berkeley, an opportunity set up by Arts of art that hang in the air like globules from an extra- Council England with the Leonardo Journal of Art and planetary consciousness. Some works from the Stardust Science and NASA. From a competitive shortlist, the Ruins series now reside behind Perspex in her London decision to choose her was very easy; she seemed to studio, radiating a beautiful, unearthly hue. Lijn has have anticipated this residency for decades – with an described how the Aerogel works make manifest physicist engagement with new materials going back to the early David Bohm’s concept of matter as ‘frozen light’. 1960s; many experiments with prisms in the 1970s which led thirty years later to a project outlined below; and her In San Francisco, Lijn visited the City Lights Bookshop proposal in the 1990s to project the word SHE onto the and renewed acquaintance with writers she first met face of the moon. when living in the Latin Quarter of Paris between 1959 and 1966. She was then closely connected to the Lijn has had a long-term engagement with testing new constellations of (often now famous) painters, poets, materials, also an important priority within space science writers, thinkers and wanderers, who gathered around research. As a young woman she had knocked on the the Left Bank of the Seine, as if plugged into European Time Forces Split Poem Machine, 1965 doors of factories in New York to ask for access to Perspex art history’s electromagnetic core. As has been well and liquid polymers, which became critically important documented, Paris at the time and, in particular the Left components in her work. She focussed on shifting Bank, was a fulcrum and hothouse of experimentation perceptions of what industrial materials might be and do, casting lines of inspiration that continue to ripple pushing them to their limits, inventing new applications out today. and creating new affordances. This provided an ideal context for the incubation of Lijn’s Lijn made connections with many leading space scientists voice as an artist. Her works from that time, which form during her residency at the Space Sciences Lab. One the majority of works in this show, demonstrate her of the most important of these links was with scientist innate clarity of vision. Though only in her early twenties, John Vallerga, with whom she began a now long-term Lijn was researching ideas and concepts from many programme of research into delineating the horizon with disciplinary fields - from art, electro-mechanics, materials

12 13 science, philosophy, poetry and physics – exploring material form, her aim was to provoke and move others lucid intersections; combining these together into experiencing the work also to be moved, to look and see striking and compelling works that speak a language of differently through experiencing moments of lucidity or interdisciplinary praxis, yet also stand alone as works of transformation. The materials, which she chose to work art, as objects of desire and for contemplation. with are often more translucent, porous and permeable than her own body and hence are potentially closer to Her lifetime has been closely if indirectly entwined with spirit or mind. Through the act of poetic transference she the exploration of space. Her accelerated professional imbues them with qualities that shift our perception of and personal development in Paris between the age of their material consistencies. 18 and 24 coincided with the advent of the Space Race and its rapid acceleration. Many artists made probes of The turning, revolving and returning nature of many of their own, both metaphorical and conceptual. Sputnik Lijn’s works similarly appear to be closer to cosmic and was successfully launched in 1957, when she was 16, universal time than linear, human time contrivances. and in April 1961 Yuri Gagarin was successfully sent into orbit. This occurred a few months after Panagiotis “Takis” Aspects of Lijn’s transformative engagement with new Vassilakis launched Beat poet into electro- materials of the industrial age recall the purity of Leger’s magnetic space in the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. Meantime machinic aesthetic and her use of line and circle speak to Cambridge mathematician Ian Sommerville was inviting familiar motifs of Modernism. But in her works the lines friends to come and watch William Burroughs leaving and the circles move into fourth and fifth dimensions. his body (with the help of tape machines, projection techniques and various other substances) in the Beat In the Galerie de la Librarie Anglaise at 42 rue de Seine Hotel a few steps from where Lijn and Takis lived in November 1963, Lijn had her first solo show which together on the rue St. André des Arts. included the works Poem Machines, Echo-Lights and Cuttings. A poem for Lijn written by Surrealist poet Michel It was characteristic of that hallucinatory period of the Courtois for the occasion was printed on the inside of early-mid 1960s that many artists, tuning into global the invitation: frequencies, sought to expand their consciousness, find psychic escape, project their minds beyond the perceived Au-delà des illusions d’optiques limits of gravity. Entretenues par l’art visuel La lumière retourne à sa source The challenge of transcending the body was also a Au-delà du regard traversé After William Burroughs visited this exhibition he invited deep concern of Lijn’s. She had empathy for the way De visions tout à fait virtuelles Lijn to the where he talked to her about his use in which artists, such as Carolee Schneemann, were La lumière voit le voyeur of cut up methods and intimated a wish to make words confronting the fact that the female body in the early Sujet à l’hypnose lumineuse move much as she had done in her Poem Machines. 1960s was usually primarily positioned as an object Qui LE verrait s’il faisait place for male pleasure. Schneemann and others worked A la lumière graine de lumière Lijn’s signature is the making of light with language, and explicitly with and within their bodies to address this, A ses echos même language as light, freed from the limitations of a static often using performance as means of primary expression. Lire1 page. In creating luminous conjunctions with turning Lijn found another platform and approach, challenging cones and – here in the gallery – with coils of copper and the boundaries of perception through seeking to invest reflective liquid globes – we are exposed to language the medium in which she worked with her energy. bare, untethered from linear rigidities, turning and By achieving an act of transference of energy into 1 Excerpt from MODE D’EMPLOI POUR LA VISION, returning to an ecstatic source. Michel Courtois, 1963

14 15 Above: First Light Drum, 1966

Opposite: Solar Cutting, 1961/2005

Next pages: Angular Cutting, 1961/2005

16 17 18 Cosmic Flares ll, 1966

20 Prism Flares, 1967

22 23 List of Works Cosmic Flares ll 1966 Restored in 2005 First measurement is height 65.8 x 190 x 11.5 cm Controller 30 x 20 x 13.5 cm Angular Cutting Polymer lenses on Perspex in painted metal frame, lights 1961/2005 and detachable programmed digital switching controller 90 x 60 x 3 cm Sawn Perspex First Light Drum 1966 Solar Cutting 34 x 34.5 x 34.7 cm 1961/2005 Enamelled copper wound perforated steel drum, Bakelite, 75.3 x 75.3 x 6 cm steel rods, motor in Perspex cover Sawn Perspex Prism Flares Gold Cylinder 1967 1964 Restored in 2005 15 x 23 x 13 cm 50 x 109 x 12.5 cm Found oil filter drum, Bronze wire stamped Controller 30 x 20 x 13.5 with a pattern, frame, metal rods, motor Polymer lenses on Perspex and Perspex prisms in metal frame, lights and detachable programmed digital Red Cylinder switching controller 1964-5 22 x 10 x 10 cm Linear Light Column Enamelled red copper wire wound on altered metal, 1969 cylinder, motor, brass rods and Perspex assembly 187.54 cm high x 31 cm diameter Enamelled copper wire wound on perforated metal Time Forces Split Poem Machine cylinder, mounted on motorised turntable, 1965 chrome steel base 16.7 x 26 x 17 cm Letraset on cylindrical oil filter, plastic, Liquid Reflections Multiple painted metal, motor 1969 Words from a poem by Nazli Nour Produced by Unlimited, Bath, UK Vacuum formed clear acrylic drum, Saturn Two Line Drum 45.5 cm diameter x 3 cm deep 1965 Cast iron motorised base, 10 cm high x 25.5 cm diameter 35.7 x 38 x 36.5 cm Integrated spotlight, 40 cm high x 11 cm Painted metal mesh truck oil filter, Bakelite, Two clear Perspex balls, respectively 4 cm and 5 cm brass rod, motor diameter, mineral oil and distilled water

24 Liliane Lijn

1939 Born in . 1958 Studied Archaeology at the Sorbonne and Art History at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Interrupted these studies to concentrate on painting. 1961-62 Lived in New York; worked with plastics, using fire and acids. 1963-64 Worked in Paris; exhibited first kinetic light works and Poem Machines. 1964-66 Lived in Athens, making use of natural forces in her sculpture. 1966 Moved to London where she now lives.

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Aberdeen Art Gallery Art Institute of Chicago Arts Council of Great Britain Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris David Roberts Art Foundation Evelina Children’s Hospital, London Fonds Nationale d’Art Contemporain, Paris Glasgow Museum, Kelvingrove Government Art Collection, London Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds Kunstmuseum, Bern Musée d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Paris Museum of New South Wales, Sydney New York Public Library Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario Saint Thomas Hospital, London Tate, London The British Council The British Museum University of Warwick, Coventry Victoria and Albert Museum, London 27 INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1963 Echo-Lights and Vibrographes, La Librairie Anglaise, Paris 1962 Fishback Gallery, New York 1967 Liliane Lijn at Indica, Indica Gallery, London 1963 Salon d’Avril “Les 2004”, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris 1970 Sculpture, Drawings, Collage, Hanover Gallery, London La Boîte et Son Contenu, Galerie H. Legendre, Paris 1972 Liliane Lijn, Germain Gallery, Paris Autour du Jeu, Galerie Ursula Girardon, Paris 1976 Beyond Light, Serpentine Gallery, London ( Arts Council touring exhibition) 1964 Salon Comparaison, Paris 1979 Recent Work, Central Art Gallery, Wolverhampton First and Second Pilot of Kinetic Art, Signals Gallery, London 1980 Roundhouse Gallery, London 1966 Art Electric, Galerie Illeana Sonnabend, Paris 1983 Prism Figures, Prism Stones, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen Weiss auf Weiss, Kunsthalle, Bern 1985 Heads, Galerie Peter Ludwig, Cologne 1967 Lumière et Mouvement, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris 1987 Imagine the Goddess, Fischer Fine Art, London Cinquième Biennale, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris 1993 Poem Machines 1962-1968, National Arts Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, Salon Comparaison, Paris 1996 Liliane Lijn: Her Mother’s Voice, The Eagle Gallery, London 1968 Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris 1997 Koans, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris Primera Exposition International di Poesia di Vanguardia Novissimo, Instituto di Tella, 1998 Liliane Lijn: Poem Machines and other Bookworks, National Library of New Zealand, Buenos Aires Wellington; Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth Science Fiction, Musée d’Arts Decoratifs, Paris 2002 Light and Memory, Rocca di Umbertide, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Guillaume Apollinaire 1880-1918: A Celebration, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 2003 Liquid Koan, The Multiple Store, London 1969 Kinetic Art, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Helsinki, and Gottenburg 2005 Liliane Lijn: Works 1959-80, Mead Gallery, Coventry Play Orbit, Royal Eisteddfodd of Wales, Flint; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London Liliane Lijn: Works 1959-80, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham 1970 Kinetics, Hayward Gallery, London 2006 Liliane Lijn selected works 1959-2005, Austin Desmond Fine Art, London New Multiple Art, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London Liliane Lijn selected works 1959-80, England Gallery, London 1975 The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London 2008 Stardust, Riflemaker Gallery, London 1976 Art of the Sixties, Tate Gallery, London Centrifugal, Royal Academy Schools Gallery, London 1977 Concrete Poetry, Galleria di Arte Moderna, Bologna 2009 Liliane Lijn: Earth Art, Willer Gallery, London 1978 Hayward Annual, Hayward Gallery, London 2011 Light Years, The Sir John Soane Museum and Riflemaker Gallery, London 1981 British Sculpture in the 20th Century, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2012 Cosmic Dramas, mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art 1983 Electra, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris 2013 Earth Body Art, Museo Civico di Santa Croce, Umbertide, Italy 1984 20th Century Drawings and Watercolours, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2015 Liliane Lijn: Early Work, RCM Galerie, Paris 1985 Decouvrez l’Holographie, Palais de la Découverte de Paris Livres d’Artistes, Centre Pompidou, Paris 1986 Conjunction of Opposites, Arte e Scienza, Venice Biennale XLII

28 29 1988 Licht und Transparenz, Museum Bellerive, Zurich 1989 Artec ‘89 International Biennial, Nagoya, Japan Fourth International Biennial Print Exhibit, Taipei, Taiwan 1990 Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London 1992 Estampes et Livres d’Artistes du XXe Siècle; Enrichissements du Cabinet des Estampes 1978-1988, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris 1993 The Sixties Art Scene in London, Barbican Art Gallery, London 1994 Art Unlimited, South Bank Centre Touring Exhibition, Leeds London; Glasgow, Leeds 1995 Livres d’Artistes, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris 1996 Rubies & Rebels, Concourse Gallery, Barbican, London 2000 Force - Fields, MACBA, Barcelona; Hayward Gallery, London Dream Machines, South Bank National Touring Exhibition; Thinking Big Concepts for Twenty-First Century British Sculpture, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 2004 Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow, Tate Britain; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 2006 60: Sixty Years of Sculpture in the Arts Council Collection, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield 2007 Recent Acquisitions Part II, British Museum, London 2008 100 Years 100 Artists 100 Works of Art, Art on the Underground, London 2009 Poor. Old. Tired. Horse, ICA, London 2011 Signals and Indica, Tate Britain, London United Enemies, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Republic of the Moon/Moon Futures, FACT, Liverpool 2012 Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, MoMa, New York 2013 Fourth Plinth Commission Shortlist, St Martins-in-the-Field, London The New Situation: Art In London in the Sixties, Sotheby’s, London. 2014 Republic of the Moon, The Arts Catalyst, Bargehouse, London Caritas: Histoires, Paraboles et Rêves, Musee de Picardie, Amiens, France Moon, Artfirst, London William S Burroughs CAN YOU ALL HEAR ME? October Gallery, London 2015 Graphic Constellations: Visual Poetry and the Properties of Space, Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge Images Moving Out Onto Space, Tate St. Ives, St. Ives

30 Colophon

Published by RCM Galerie, Paris

Essays by Guy Brett and Bronaċ Ferran

Design by Richard Wilding and Liliane Lijn

Photography by Richard Wilding, except for page 2, Robert Whitaker and page 5, Stephen Weiss

Printed by Precision Printing, London

Cover image: First Light Drum, 1966

Page 25: Time Forces Split Poem Machine, 1965

Page 26: Linear Light Column, 1969

Page 31: Gold Cylinder, 1964

Artwork copyright © Liliane Lijn

Text copyright © Guy Brett and Bronaċ Ferran

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