Vibrant abstract paintings displayed on a white brick gallery wall, with two prominent copper-colored sculptures in a contemporary art exhibition setting.

Liliane Lijn

Seeds of Tomorrow

★★★☆☆

On until 22 November 2025

Lijn’s kinetic sculptures are prone to typecasting, except that their type depends entirely on content. Through Lijn’s long career, her trademark rotating cones and columns have borne text, abstract marks, and light projections; those have had little in common besides their spin. The two totems now doing their rounds spin yarns of enamelled wire. Elsewhere – in Tate’s Electric Dreams, say – they could have inducted currents to stop a pacemaker. Yet paired with Lijn’s abstract canvases, they turn easy to miss for the cobbled mews gallery’s architectural columns.

Which is to speak deliberately around the paintings, extracted from a series made in the early 1990s. If Lijn’s oils lack finesse, they far surpass the sculptures’ dynamism even as they are static. Are these dreams, floral fields, or psychedelic visions? No matter; how loudly they revolt against the cyclicality of their studio siblings! How spectacularly they burn!


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

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