On Collections: Liliane Lijn on Bernd and Hilla Becher

June 2023
On Collections: Liliane Lijn on Bernd and Hilla Becher
35:39
Roberts Institute of Art

Liliane Lijn

Photo: Anne Purkiss

In this podcast, we invited Liliane Lijn, whose work is featured in the David and Indrė Roberts Collection to choose a piece from the collection as a starting point for a conversation.

Lilliane is one of the curatorial collaborators for Deep Horizons, our exhibition with MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, and she selected Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work Water Towers, 1972-2012 which features in the exhibition.

Liliane describes her early encounters with Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work and its impact on her practice. The conversation explores her own fascination with industrial structures, the role of fantasy and imagination in design and how she has experimented with light in her work.

Works referenced in the podcast

Roberts Institute of Art

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers, 1972-2012

© Estate of Bernd & Hilla Becher. Represented by Max Becher

Liliane Lijn

Liliane Lijn born in New York, internationally exhibited since the 1960s, her works belong to collections including Tate, British Museum, V&A and FNAC in Paris. Lijn works across media – drawing, sculpture, film, text and performance – to explore language, mythology and the relationship between light and matter.

Exhibitions include: Lighten Up! On Biology and Time, EPFL, Lausanne, 2023; If Not Now When: Generations Of Women Sculptors, 1960 – 2022, Hepworth Wakefield, 2023;Concrete Experience, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, 2022; Light: Works from Tate’s Collection, ACMI, Melbourne; Siren, (some poetics), Amant Foundation, New York, 2023.

Liliane Lijn is represented by Rodeo, London/Piraeus.

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd (1931–2007) and Hilla Becher (1934–2015) are considered the most influential German photographers of the post-war period. Over the past 50 years, the couple and artist duo captured the aesthetic of disappearing industrial facilities, often making the overlooked structures visible to viewers for the first time. Their strict adherence to particular formal principles and their typological approach gave rise to the idea of photography as conceptual art. The Bechers taught at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf and shaped the work of an entire generation of photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth. Sprüth Magers represents the artist couple’s Estate.

Deep Horizons

with Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Roberts Institute of Art

Bernd and Hilla Becher
Water Towers

Roberts Institute of Art

Liliane Lijn
Cosmic Flares III

Roberts Institute of Art

Collection Postcard
Boyle Family, Demolition Site Study With Broken Red Brick and Rusty Metal, 1990–1991

Roberts Institute of Art