Contents
Biography, Contact information, News
Archive, Sunsets, Notes From Underground, Waves, 2012-2015
Texts, Reviews, Published projects
Deep Inside Inner Experience
2009
Photograph diptych in artist's frames
44.45 x 30.48 cm and 25.4 x 30.48
Edition of 5
A bar in France with a not-so-subtle name, and a book by the French thinker Georges Bataille. While living in Dijon for a three months, I was reading this book and passing this bar on my daily comings and goings. Presented together, the diptych plays with their names, colors, and with Bataille’s transgressive fiction and writings on limit.
Exhibition history
- Take Form, Galleri Riis, Stockholm, 2014
- Signs of Life, curated by Gladys-Katherina Hernando, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2010
- Galerie Talant (as part of a FRAC Bourgogne residency), On the Beaten Path, 2009
- Les Samouraïs, FDC Brussels, curated by Lilou Vidal, 2010 (solo)
Installation view (with Letters from Dr. Bamberger), Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin
Detail of double slide projection
Detail of double slide projection
Detail of double slide projection
Printed text (variable presentation)
Installation view in Notes From Underground, Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017
Installation view in Notes From Underground, Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017
Installation view in Notes From Underground, Kunsthall Trondheim, 2019
Detail of double slide projection
Detail of double slide projection
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National Geographic
2009
Double slide projection and printed text
Variable installation
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
National Geographic consists of two side-by-side slide projections and a text component. The imagery in the piece is derived from a collection of the titular magazine from the 1970’s and 1980’s belonging to the artist’s late father. One projector shows a series of frontal views of different images of mountains, clipped from the magazine. Alongside, another projection shows the clipping’s corresponding back page, making literal a passage from one side of the mountain to the other. The text relays an intimate narrative that moves back and forth through space and time. There are 40 slide images in total that rotate in unison every 7 seconds. This text component can be treated in various ways. In one instance, it was printed on the exhibition’s take-way brochure; in another, it was made available on sheets of paper stacked on a shelf near to the slide projections.
Associated texts
- Review, Two Birds, Eighty Mountains and a Portrait of the Artist, Artforum, 2011 (343 KB)
- Artist's Project adapting National Geographic, Glänta, Issue 4.09 (2.8 MB)
Exhibition history
- Notes From Underground, Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway, 2017 (solo)
- Two Birds, Eighty Mountains and a Portrait of the Artist, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, 2011 (solo)
- Still / Moving / Still, curated by Marc Glöde, Cultuurcentrum Knokke-Heist, Belgium, 2009
Letters From Dr. Bamberger
Installation view, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels
Detail of letter from 2006
Detail of letter from 2009
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Letters From Dr. Bamberger
2001-2012
Annual post-physical letters
Variable installation
24.5 x 17 cm (9 - 5/8 x 6 - 5/8 inches) each
9 in total
Unique
Letters From Dr. Bamberger consists of nine letters received from the artist’s former general physician, following annual physical check-ups. The letters could be regarded as a series of commissioned portraits made from language that dryly depicts the state of a body, and that also conveys what is an unusual, privileged occurrence within the dysfunctional and costly American healthcare system. The piece began when Lisa Tan lived in Los Angeles. It continued to be produced after she moved to New York in 2005. It’s when she gained resident status in Sweden where healthcare is socialized that the visits ended. Letters From Dr. Bamberger can be installed as a group or as individual letters dispersed throughout a space or series of spaces.
Associated texts
- Review, Two Birds, Eighty Mountains and a Portrait of the Artist, Artforum, 2011 (343 KB)
- First Take, by Christian Rattemeyer, Artforum 2006 (394 KB)
Exhibition history
- 84 Steps, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, 2022-21
- My Pictures of You, Galleri Riis, 2019 (solo)
- A nonspatial continuum..., Schleicher/Lange, Berlin, 2013
- Le Prince des Rayons, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels, 2012
- Exhibition for a Transition Function, Hilary Crisp, London, 2011
- Two Birds, Eighty Mountains, and a Portrait of the Artist, Arthouse, Austin, 2011 (solo)
- Based on a True Story, Artists Space, New York, 2005
Installation view, D'Amelio Terras, New York
Detail of found painting
Installation view D'Amelio Terras, New York
Detail of photograph of replacement painting
Detail of framed text, D'Amelio Terras, New York
Detail of framed text
Installation view, D'Amelio Terras, New York
Installation view, Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, Brussels
Installation view, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels
Installation view, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels
Detail of framed text
Installation view in Notes From Underground at Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017
Installation view in Notes From Underground at Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017 (National Geographic in foreground)
Installation view in Notes From Underground at Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017
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Moving a Mountain
2008
Found painting, photograph, framed text
Photo 152.4 x 182.9 cm, painting 52.4 x 62.5 cm, framed text 64.1 x 56.2 cm
Variable installation
Unique
Moving a Mountain is comprised of a found painting stolen from a hotel in Mexico City by the artist, a photograph of a painting by a commissioned landscape painter to mimic the style of a kitsch hotel painting, and a framed text that reads like a prose poem. The piece stems from a 24- hour “one night stand” – a trip devised by the artist, in which she travels to a foreign city, walks around all night with no preconceived plan and returns home the following morning. The piece has been exhibited in multiple locations since it was produced for a solo project with the long shuttered gallery D’Amelio Terras in New York, moving the mountain farther away from its source than ever could have been anticipated.
THE FRAMED TEXT READS– It was the Day of the Dead, and the city was decorated with orange clusters of candles and marigolds. I took a walk down the Alameda to the Zocalo, and tried to find a restaurant my guidebook described as “inexplicably” decorated with pictures of mountains. I imagined an arrangement of several yellowing framed photographs, but when I found the address, it was closed. It was after midnight, and I decided to return to my hotel, a modest colonial-style accommodation on Avenida Bolívar. When I closed the door behind me, I heard two lovers in the room above. One was sighing gracefully in a distinct rhythm. I took down my ponytail, began to undress, and then looked at a painting hung between the beds. I marveled at the sounds as I stared at the painting, a snow-capped mountain with a lake and a field of pink flowers. I mused at how the mountain exists with beautiful indifference. The residue of the evening mingled with the lovers above me, and I moved closer to the painting, closer to its peak. Several months later, I decided to go back to Mexico City to take the painting, and replace it with another mountain—the one that I grew up with.
Associated texts
- Moving a Mountain text (17 KB)
- Artforum.com Critics Pick for Moving a Mountain, D'Amelio Terras, 2008 (664 KB)
Exhibition history
- Notes From Underground, Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway, 2017 (solo)
- Sunsets, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels, 2012 (solo)
- Llama, organized by Lisa Oppenheim, Conduits, Milan, 2010
- Archeology of Longing, curated by Sofia Hernandez Cuy Chong, Kadist Foundation, Paris, 2008
- Moving a Mountain, Front Room Exhibition, D'Amelio Terras, New York, 2008 (solo)
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
Art in Paris
Portrait of Charles Baudelaire
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 89 (42,5 x 40,5 cm / 32 x 24 cm)
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 71 (57 x 44 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 61 (40 x 66 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Don't Play the Heartless One
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 64 (80 x 68,5 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 75 (46,5 x 37,5 cm , 32 x 24 cm)
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 54 (38 x 37,5 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 69 (64 x 99 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Don't Play the Heartless One and Portrait of Charles Baudelaire
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 73 (34 x 24 cm, 32 x 24)
Itinerary Based on the Footnotes from Baudelaire's Review of the Salon of 1846, Page 57 (45 x 40 cm, 32 x 24 cm)
Opening reception, Andreas Grimm, Munich
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
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The Baudelaire Itineraries
(see each caption for the titles of each work in series)
2007
Archival ink on canvas in artist's frame, photograph in artist's frame
Dimensions vary for each diptych, all photographs 32 x 24 cm
Edition of 1 + 1 AP complete installation
Edition of 2 + 1 AP diptychs and individual photographs
This is a series of prints on canvas and photographs that propose travel itineraries to see works of art referenced in the footnotes of Charles Baudelaire's review of the Salon of 1846. This salon marked the end of the Romantic movement and the beginning of Decadence which Baudelaire, dandy and Symbolist poet, was a leading figure. All works are derived from Jonathan Mayne’s Art in Paris 1845-1862, Salons and other Exhibitions, Reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, published 1965 by Phaidon Press Limited. The footnotes are a combination of Baudelaire’s and Mayne’s.
The Baudelaire Itineraries, along with works such as The Garden of Earthly Delights, One Night Stand (Paris), and The Seven Year Itch, comprise instances in Lisa Tan’s oeuvre in which a kind of wanderlust by proposal is engaged. In approximating an encounter with any given historical place, event, or object found in her proposals, Tan relies on how any viewer is an individual vessel of image culture. The works consider how representation informs our understanding of the world – or lack thereof – perhaps most so in those cases of which we have no first-hand experience.
Associated texts
- Review, The Baudelaire Itineraries, Artforum, 2007 (238 KB)
Exhibition history
- Shiver in the Shift, curated by Eva Gonzalez-Sancho, Parra & Romero, Madrid, 2012
- Ambassador Suites, organized by Katarina Burin, Galerie Lucile Corty, Paris, 2008
- The Baudelaire Itineraries, Andreas Grimm München, 2007 (solo)
Video still
Les Samouraïs
Detail, Les Samouraïs
Detail, Le Monde, June 29, 1967, Photograph in artist's frame, 27 x 36 inches each, Diptych, Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Installation detail
Video still
Video still
Video still
Video still
Video still
Video still
Video still
Video still
Les Samouraïs, Video stills, Print edition of 10, Photograph, 66.5 x 50.75 cm
Detail, Le Monde, June 29, 1967, Photograph in artist's frame, 27 x 36 inches each, Diptych, Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Detail, Le Monde, June 29, 1967, Photograph in artist's frame, 27 x 36 inches each, Diptych, Edition of 3 + 2 AP
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Les Samouraïs
2010
Digital video with sound, light stands, painted wood,
projector, text component revealed in variable ways
Duration of projection, 3 min 36 seconds, continuous loop
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Les Samouraïs takes the opening scene from Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), and through image and sound, makes an alteration by adding an additional caged bird to the auteur’s opening scene. The simple gesture foils the film’s theme of isolation while fictitiously modifying an occurrence within historical reality. The protagonist, played by Alain Delon, is an assassin who adheres to a life of solitude and detachment. In the opening scene he finishes a cigarette in bed, walks over to the bird—the only creature he truly connects with—and then puts on his trench coat and hat before closing the door behind him to face the world outside. Melville wrote, directed, and edited his films, including Le Samouraï, in Studios Jenner in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. While finishing the film, the studio was destroyed by a fire and the female finch was the only casualty.
Associated texts
- 500 Words, Les Samouraïs, artforum.com, 2010 (237 KB)
- Review, Two Birds, Eighty Mountains and a Portrait of the Artist, Artforum, 2011 (343 KB)
Exhibition history
- Stand Opposite the Chorus, curated by Laura Mott, Galerie Rotor, Gothenburg, 2011
- Time's Arrow, curated by Ben Loveless, Galerie Nordenhake, 2010
- Kierkegaard's Walk, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Galeria Marília Razuk, São Paulo, 2010
- Les Samouraïs, FDC Brussels, curated by Lilou Vidal, 2010 (solo)
Video link
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Detail, bottom right corner
Detail of upper part of photo, listing cities with works by Hieronymus Bosch
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
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The Garden of Earthly Delights
2004
Photograph in artist's frame
38 x 98 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
The photograph is an itinerary to see all of the paintings by Hieronymus Bosch that exist in public and private collections world-wide, including The Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-1504) in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado. The top half of photograph shows a list of the works, the middle portion describes the length of stay in each city, and the bottom half lists hotel accommodations and means of transportation.
“Originating in London and concluding in New York, the meticulous intercontinental itinerary comprises 124 days of travel. The work takes the form of an eight-foot-long white-on-black chart; the trip itself, never consummated, remains an unfulfilled possibility—and is perhaps all the more satisfying for that.” -Christian Rattemeyer on Lisa Tan, Artforum, January 2006
Associated texts
- First Take, by Christian Rattemeyer, Artforum 2006 (394 KB)
Exhibition history
- Based on a True Story, curated by Christian Rattemeyer, Artists Space, New York, 2004
- Lisa Tan, Grimm|Rosenfeld (now Andreas Grimm München), Munich, 2005 (solo)
Detail
2 Americans
Installation view (with Alter Nordfriedhof), Andreas Grimm München
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2 Americans
2010
letterpress on paper in artist's frame
65 x 85 cm
Edition of 5
The barely visible “blind-stamped” text is lifted from a New York Times article on the crash of Air France flight 447. Starting with "2 Americans", ending with "2 Swedes and a Turk", the alphabetized list of passenger nationalities is a temporary stand-in for a permanent loss. The list, and others like it, begins a curious process of personal and political identification that occurs in relation to nationality.
Associated texts
- Review, Monopol Magazin Für Kunst Und Leben, 2011 (71 KB)
Exhibition history
- Take Form, Galleri Riis, Stockholm, 2014
- Art Brussels, Galerie VidalCugiletta, Brussels, 2011
- North Drive Press #5, New York, 2010
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 37 and 48
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 27
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 17
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 48
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 11
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 23
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 06
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 26
In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix, 34
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
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In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugène Delacroix
(each print has its own number that follows the series title above)
Archival ink-jet with chine-collé in artist's frame
38 x 50 cm each print
Edition of 1 + 1 AP
The series of delicate chine-collé prints reveals an enduring friendship, captured in the letters written to the major figure of French romantic painting from his life-long best friend and former lover, Joséphine de Forget. With his status, Delacroix's letters to de Forget – and to others – have been transcribed, translated and made into books. The impetus for this work was to give voice to Mme de Forget. A research hunt ensued, taking the artist to the Frick Collection Reference Library in New York, to Musee Delacroix and antiquarian galleries in Paris, and finally to the Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne, where a substantial quantity of de Forget’s letters are archived.
Associated texts
- Review, Monopol Magazin Für Kunst Und Leben, 2011 (71 KB)
- Review for Two Birds, Eighty Mountains, and a Portrait of the Artist, Artforum, 2011 (343 KB)
- Transcription and translation of a selection of the Mme de Forget's letters (83 KB)
Exhibition history
- Two Birds, Eighty Mountains, and a Portrait of the Artist, Arthouse, Austin, 2011 (solo)
Recoleta
2006-2010
40 pencil on paper frottage drawings, cloth-covered clamshell box with ribbon
10.25 x 13.25 inches, each drawing, 12.75 x 15.75 x 1.25 inches, box
Unique
We often preserve the memory of an indefinable charm from these towns we’ve merely brushed against. The memory indeed of our own indecision, our hesitant footsteps, our gaze which didn’t know what to turn towards and that found almost anything affecting... — George Perec
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal. — Jorge Luis Borges
“The cemetery’s giant vaults, stacked along avenues inside the high walls, resemble the rooftops of a fanciful utopian town from above," read my guidebook. I packed a pad of 11 x 14 inch paper and black pencils. And after we arrived back to Buenos Aires from the northern Patagonian Pampa I visited the cemetery. I then spent several days making grave rubbings of the mausoleums—avoiding any text or overly decorative textures.
The walk from the hotel to the Cementerio de la Recoleta took me past a small bakery, then the Israeli Embassy Memorial (bombed in 1992), across Avenida 9 de Julio—the iconic wide street that bears the white obelisk. Then past an ornate fountain near the Brazilian and French embassies, fancy retail spaces, a grand hotel, and finally, a family of huge Banyan trees. Along the way, international modernist apartment buildings—so plentiful in downtown Buenos Aires—lent a decidedly cosmopolitan tone. Coming home from those days of rubbing graves, I tried to grasp the relationship between the built space around me and the unknowable.
The next time I went back to BA was to make a series of large grave rubbing drawings (84 x 48 inches each). An effort to capture the scale of the mausoleums, impressive monochromes, imbued with weight and aura. It took the better part of a day to make one. But when the suite of drawings arrived back to my studio in New York, I had to reckon with how they failed to hold resonance. The small drawings from my first trip were still convincing though. They could be inventoried in a single stack. I could hold and flip through them. One structure after another.
Made with the support of Eloisa Haudenschild, and also to Hernán Reig.
Installation view, Alter Nordfriedhof with 2 Americans, Andreas Grimm München
Detail
Detail
Detail
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Alter Nordfriedhof
2007-2011
Photographs in artist's frame
63,5 x 93,5 cm
Edition of 5 + 1 AP
A collection of snapshots taken in the Alter Nordfriedhof cemetery on a spring day, in Munich. Vines and flowers have obscured all but each of the tombstone's general shape. Through the use of repetition and the apparatus of archival structures, an elegant ontological study transforms into a poetic meditation on mortality.
Associated texts
- Review, Monopol Magazin Für Kunst Und Leben, 2011 (71 KB)
Exhibition history
- Galleri Riis, Gallery artists, 2017
- On The Passage of a Few, Simon Preston Gallery, New York, 2013
Language Barrier, video still, first channel
Language Barrier, video still, second channel
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Language Barrier
2009
Digital two-channel video projection
Continuous loop, silent
Variable installation with height of projections 230 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
The video shows the glass-encased entrance lobby of an International Style high-rise apartment in an affluent neighborhood of Buenos Aires – at nighttime. A recurring mechanism takes the viewer past the length of the lobby repeatedly, as the position of a doorman changes with each successive pass. Jacopo Crivelli Visconti writes: ”Each time the camera slides by, the doorman is in a different position: first he is sitting down, reading; then he is looking out of the building; a third time, he is standing up. In another shot the camera glides through the lobby and the doorman is nowhere to be seen: he may have gone or perhaps he has not arrived yet; there is no way of knowing, as the time of this video is not linear but confusing and enigmatic, like that of La Jalousie, the novel by Robbe- Grillet in which we also time and time again witness scenes that are the same yet not the same.”
Of the video’s title, Language Barrier, Crivelli Visconti continues. “In the first instance the reading would be obvious: as the artist herself says, ‘the glass boundary separates the lobby doorman and the pedestrian like a language barrier’; like a glass membrane which separates the doorman’s gaze from that of the artist who walks down the street (and from ours), the linguistic barrier is a fragile and almost invisible barrier, yet it separates two worlds, complicating the conversations of travellers and healthily confounding the certainties of those who stay behind. However, it may not be entirely wrong to think that language is, in itself and independently of the differences between languages, a barrier. Just like glass, language is a transparent barrier that, as it separates and protects, becomes more invisible the more we look at it. There is—as works such as Language Barrier prove so extraordinarily—a hidden poetry in the materiality of things...”
Associated texts
- The Transparency of Language by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti (74 KB)
Exhibition history
- Language Barrier, Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2009 (solo)
Installation view, One Night Stand (Paris), LA><ART, Los Angeles
Snapshot
One Night Stand (Paris), Video stills, c-prints, 14 x 9 inches each, Edition of 5
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One Night Stand (Paris)
2006
Single channel video projection
22 minutes 11 seconds, silent
Variable installation
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
The video consists of subtitles against a constant black background. The subtitles are derived from notes that Tan wrote over the course of a trip from New York to Paris, which lasted 24 hours. Drawn to the properties of nighttime in a foreign city for the way it evokes a sense of alienation outside of any social order and elicits transformative states, she devised a “one night stand” – selecting Paris as her first encounter (Mexico City was second, which resulted in her piece Moving a Mountain). With no preconceived itinerary, the only self-issued precept was to roam the city alone past midnight while keeping a notebook. In this image-less piece, Tan relies on how each of us is an individual vessel of image culture. Even if a viewer has had no first-hand experience of Paris, it is invariably part of what Felix Gonzalez-Torres has called “blood memory” – a knowing sense of a place that is a result of the processes involved in inhabiting – not from actual physical presence – but through an experience of multitudinous representations.
Associated texts
- Video transcript (152 KB)
- Review, One Night Stand, LAXART, Art Papers, 2007 (176 KB)
- Review, House Call at Three's Company, Art F City, 2009 (70 KB)
Exhibition history
- One Night Stand, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, LAXART, Los Angeles, 2006
- House Call, curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Piper Marshall, Three's Company, New York, 2009
Installation view
Installation view
Two in the Labyrinth, 15.75 x 13.25 inches
Installation view
Installation view
Nadja Nadja, 18 x 15 inches
Two Against Nature, 18 x 15 inches
Two Thousand Plateaus, 19.5 x 16.5
Jane Eyre Jane Eyre, 18 x 15 inches
Two Hearts of Darkness, 13 x 15 inches
Two Voyeurs, 18 x 15 inches
Two Contingent Objects of Contemporary Art, 25 x 19.5 inches
Two Postmodern Conditions, 19.5 x 16.5
Two Flowers of Evil, 18 x 15 inches
Two North China Lovers, 18 x 15 inches
Two Histories of Sexuality, 18 x 15 inches
Two Books of Laughter and Forgetting, 18 x 15 inches
Two Impossibilities, 18 x 15 inches
The Snows of Two Kilimanjaros, 18 x 15 inches
Two Deaths in Venice, 15.75 x 13.25
Two Societies of the Spectacle, 19.5 x 16.5
Two Vice Consuls, 18 x 15 inches
Two Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 18 x 15
Homer Homer, 18 x 15 inches
Two Brave New Worlds, 15.75 x 13.25
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Books
(the series is informally referred to as Books and each
photograph has its own distinct title. See captions)
2006
Digital c-print in artist's frame
Dimensions variable for each work
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Lisa Tan relocated to New York from Los Angeles and moved in with her boyfriend at the time, also an artist, which resulted in their respective libraries converging. The photographs create an index of the books they own in common as a type of portraiture. The titles of the works humorously play off of their coupling, for instance, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness becomes Two Hearts of Darkness. The photographs take up individual subjecthood as it is formed in part by the shared experiences of literature – and in the case at hand – the books are indicative of an iteration of a certain American liberal arts education. Still, no matter how many common references two people might share, a gap always exists between the spines.
Associated texts
- Text by Monika Szewczyk for the exhibition Ex-Libris, Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels, 2011 (655 KB)
- 94 at 34, My Grandmother and Alain Robbe-Grillet, This Long Century, entry 27, 2009 (111 KB)
Exhibition history
- Difference and Repitition, curated by Jacopo Crivelli, Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, 2012
- Ex-Libris, Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, Brussels, 2011
- There is No(w) Romanticism, curated by Lilou Vidal, FDC Brussels, 2009
- Sturm und Drang, Galerie Kamm, Berlin, 2008
- Lisa Tan, Grimm|Rosenfeld, New York, 2006 (solo)
Detail
Detail
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Broken Baccarat
2006
Lead crystal glass, digital c-print, acrylic, and lacquer
Print: framed 12 x 12 inches
Pedestal: 38 x 6 x 6 inches
unique
A friend gave me a lead-crystal sphere as a gift. I threw it out of my two-story window.
Associated texts
- Review, “Happenstance,” The New York Times, December 30, 2005 (63 KB)
Exhibition history
- Happenstance, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, Harris Lieberman, 2006
Installation view, A Kiss for Fredrik Nilsen with The Garden of Earthly Delights
A Kiss for Fredrik Nilsen
A Kiss for Fredrik Nilsen
Detail of first image
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A Kiss for Fredrik Nilsen
2004 - 2005
Color-aid paper, lipstick, piezo print, photographs
15 x 21 3/4, 24 x 30 3/4, 35 x 42 inches
Unique
A piece of red Color-Aid paper, stained with my lip-stick kiss, then documented until the kiss disappeared completely.
Associated texts
- First Take, by Christian Rattemeyer, Artforum, 2006 (394 KB)
Exhibition history
- Lisa Tan, Grimm|Rosenfeld (now Andreas Grimm München), Munich, 2005 (solo)
Ellsworth Kelly
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Ellsworth Kelly
2004
Engraved Card, Acrylic and Painted Wood
8 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 33 inches, 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 5, 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 38 inches
Edition of 3
Engraved cards that were made for the artist Ellsworth Kelly as a meditation on his name and oeuvre, and as a thank you gift.
Associated texts
- First Take, by Christian Rattemeyer, Artforum, 2006 (394 KB)
Exhibition history
- Mind Over Manner, Grimm|Rosenfeld (now Andreas Grimm München), Munich, 2004
- Game Over, Grimm|Rosenfeld, (now Andreas Grimm München) Munich, 2005
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Seven Year Itch
2005-2011
Pencil on vellum
Framed 7 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches each
23 drawings in custom made box
Unique
During the seventh year of living in Los Angeles, Tan gained access privileges to the Getty Research Institute. She would spend her evenings researching the Institute’s extensive collection of travel books. A seductive set of Italian travel guidebooks from the Touring Club Italiano caught her attention. The resulting piece consists of twenty-three frottage drawings of the covers of the books from each region in Italy.
Associated texts
- First Take, by Christian Rattemeyer, Artforum, 2006 (394 KB)
Exhibition history
- Art Brussels, Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, 2013
- Lisa Tan, Grimm|Rosenfeld (now Andreas Grimm München), Munich, Germany, 2005 (solo)
- Sixteen:One, Los Angeles, 2005
Installation view
Installation view
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Wall Treatments
2001
White paint and wood
Variable dimensions
The 2001 USC Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition took place in a vast unoccupied floor of a high-rise office building in downtown Los Angeles. In various parts of the space, sections of wall were finished with moulding and paint.
Exhibition history
- 8th and Figueroa, USC Master of Fine Arts exhibition, 2001
Video link
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The Indolent Leopard
2006
A cocktail consisting of
1 1/2 oz cognac, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 tsp sugar,
6 oz champagne, 1 cantaloupe ball in a champagne flute
The Indolent Leopard was created with a tradition of artist-conceived cocktails in mind. It was made site-specifically for artist's editions that Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and Christian Rattemeyer curated for the Standard Miami Beach during Art Basel Miami, in 2006, at the height of the fair's popularity.
Exhibition history
- The Standard Hotel Basket Editions, curated by Christian Rattemeyer, The Standard Hotel Miami Beach, 2006
Giovanni and Anne, 2010
Josh and Courtney, 2013
Meriç and Theo, 2013
Lisa and Jacob, 2016
Lisa and Jonas (2007), 2016
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Detail
Alle Worte, die sich night allein mit Worten beschreiben lassen
Detail
Bilder, die all Worte beschreiben, die sich nicht allein mit Worten Beschreiben lassen
Installation view with In Search of the Forgotten..., Andreas Grimm München
Installation view, Andreas Grimm München
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Alle Worte, die sich nicht allein mit Worten beschreiben lassen (Duden, Mannheim 1970)
and Bilder, die alle Worte beschreiben, die sich nicht allein mit Worten beschreiben
lassen (Duden, Mannheim 1970)
2011
80 x 128 cm
archival ink-jet on paper
Edition of 5
Two sister works' titles translate to: “All the words that cannot be described by words alone” and “The images that describe all the words that cannot be described by words alone.”
Associated texts
- Review, Monopol Magazin Für Kunst Und Leben, 2011 (71 KB)
Exhibition history
- Llama 2, organized by Ana Cardoso, Nuno Centeno, Porto, 2011
Detail, All the Times the Words Love and Death Appear in Henri Barbusse's Hell
All the Times the Words Love and Death Appear in Henri Barbusse's Hell
Detail, All the Times the Words Love and Death Appear in Henri Barbusse's Hell
Detail, All the Times the Words Love and Death Appear in Henri Barbusse's Hell
Detail, All the Times the Words Boredom, Bored, Bore, Bores, and Boring Appear in Alberto Moravia's Boredom
All the Times the Words Boredom, Bored, Bore, Bores, and Boring Appear in Alberto Moravia's Boredom
Detail, All the Times the Words Boredom, Bored, Bore, Bores, and Boring Appear in Alberto Moravia's Boredom
Detail, All the Times the Words Boredom, Bored, Bore, Bores, and Boring Appear in Alberto Moravia's Boredom
Detail, All the Times the Words Death, Die, Dying, Died, and Dead Appear in Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence
All the Times the Words Death, Die, Dying, Died, and Dead Appear in Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence
Detail, All the Times the Words Death, Die, Dying, Died, and Dead Appear in Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence
Detail, All the Times the Words Death, Die, Dying, Died, and Dead Appear in Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence
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Counting Words
2008
18 x 24 inches
archival ink on paper and photograph
unique
An inventory of words that play off of each book's title. The worn snapshot in the left corner served as the bookmark.
Exhibition history
- Sturm und Drang, Galerie Kamm, Berlin, 2008
- Volta, Andreas Grimm München, Basel, 2008
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