Art Basel Online Viewing Room: 'Memories of Elsewhere'

16 June 2020

To coincide with Art Basel's Online Viewing Room, taking place from 17 – 26 June, Lisson Gallery is pleased to present Memories of Elsewhere, an online exhibition of masterworks by nine key artists from all over the globe, tackling themes of dislocation, translation, engagement and action. The memory of Ai Weiwei’s destroyed studio – poetically titled Souvenir from Shanghai – lives on in his defiant and elegant sculpture; Leon Polk Smith invokes the spirits of his ancestors through colour and line, while Stanley Whitney and Carmen Herrera weave evocative abstract patterns through concentrated shapes and lifetimes of experience. An important clarion call for our times comes in the collaged scenes of John Akomfrah’s searing 1986 portrayal of a society in meltdown, Handsworth Songs, made with the Black Audio Film Collective, while exactly 30 years prior, Hélio Oiticica was striking out from Brazil’s establishment on a radical path of his own. An early Anish Kapoor unearths dormant myths and portals to elsewhere through form and suggestion, while Lee Ufan symbolically smashes the purity of a pane of glass to go beyond gesture and express his disbelief in political systems.

Art Basel's Online Viewing Room previews begin on 17 June, and will open to the public 19 June. Memories of Elsewhere can be viewed now on Lisson Gallery's Online Exhibition platform. Click here to view.

Image: Anish Kapoor, 1000 Names (1981) Mixed media and pigment