Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language

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Atom Born Beings

Liliane Lijn. Atom Born Beings. 1962/63

Liliane Lijn (b. 1939). Atom Born Beings. 1962–63. Letraset on painted metal drum, plastic, painted metal, and motor, 9 3/4 x 11 13/16 x 10" (24.8 x 30 x 25.4 cm). Courtesy the artist. © Liliane Lijn

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Lijn’s spinning cones and cylinders inscribed with alphabets, fonts, and poems recall the revolving disks used in Marcel Duchamp’s film Anémic Cinéma (1925–26; disks from the film are on view in this exhibition), but because they whirl faster, Lijn’s works transform the text into abstractions. “I wanted the word to be seen in movement, dissolving into a pure vibration until it became the energy of sound,” the artist has said. Lijn’s practice is aligned with those of other Concrete poets through this merging of language and object and the importance the artist has assigned to experiencing text holistically rather than reading it; her work has frequently been included in anthologies and exhibitions alongside that of Henri Chopin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Kitasono Katue, and other artists and poets whose work is on view here.