New works by Daniel Buren, Allora & Calzadilla and Carmen Herrera will go on show at Lisson Gallery in London later this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the veteran dealership, which has long championed minimal and conceptual artists such as Donald Judd and Dan Graham.
While the gallery’s founder Nicholas Logsdail seemed to “plough a lonely furrow” in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the movements he supported “soon became the lingua franca of contemporary art”, says Ossian Ward, the gallery’s head of content.
Lisson will mark the anniversary with an A-to-Z publication featuring more than 150 artists who have had solo shows since 1967. Ephemera, drawings and letters will also chart the gallery’s development against the backdrop of the international art world. Meanwhile, a new strand of on- and off-site shows in London called Lisson Presents will pair works by emerging artists with historical pieces by established practitioners.
In September, the French conceptual artist Buren will show new sculptures and installations, while Allora & Calzadilla, who represented the US at the 2011 Venice Biennale, will present a new body of work that “continues their interest in politics and social awareness”, a gallery statement says. Herrera’s exhibition (November-December) will “cement [her] as a leading figure within the international history of modernist abstraction”, the gallery adds.
Lisson Gallery was launched in early 1967 when Logsdail converted three floors of his house at 68 Bell Street in northwest London into a showcase for his fellow students from the Slade School of Fine Art. But the move enflamed Slade’s principal, William Coldstream, who expelled Logsdail from the art college.
The late filmmaker Derek Jarman urged Logsdail to continue with the gallery project and on 4 April 1967, the first exhibition of “paintings, graphics and sculpture” by Jarman, Keith Milow and Paul Riley, among others, opened to the public.
Key moments in the gallery’s history include a joint show in 1970 for Judd and Sol LeWitt, the first of many UK debuts for major US artists. In 2010, Marina Abramovic presented many of her historic performance pieces, including the entire Rhythm series, across both London galleries.
Lisson, which now occupies two venues on Bell Street, expanded abroad in 2011, opening a space in Milan. A show of works by Herrera inaugurated its New York gallery, located under the High Line in Chelsea, last May.
In New York, Lisson has focussed on organising exhibitions by artists who have had “little visibility in the US, because there’s no point in showing artists that everyone has seen before”, the gallery’s director Alex Logsdail said during a press preview on Tuesday. On view currently are rarely- and never-before-seen spray-painted canvases and photo-collages by the British artist Roy Colmer (until 18 February), who died in 2014 and was primarily known as a conceptual photographer and videographer.
In the spring and early summer, the New York gallery will show new sculptures by the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes and new and early video installations by the American-born artist Susan Hiller, marking both artists’ first gallery shows in the US in at least ten years. Slated to follow is an exhibition of new and recent works by the British painter Peter Joseph, who is Lisson’s longest-standing artist, having first shown with the gallery in London in 1967. A show by the Iranian-born, London-based artist Shirazeh Houshiary will close the year and mark the artist’s largest show in the US to date.
Additional reporting by Gabriella Angeleti