La Madeliene Poem Machine Sculpture by Liliane Lijn

La Madeleine, 1964/2004

Lijn is an artist who attends to the past and to memory and the place name evokes a Proustian memory – that of the instrument which opens the vistas of involuntary memory, a persistent image, just as the whirling units of classical culture re-combined into a new but also primordial spectacle.
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Sound Rain Free Future, 1963-1964

Lijn made the hand held Poem Wheels during a period when she lived in Greece in a house without electricity. Lijn was busy building the house and these were the first art works she made there. She thought they might be used the way Greek men used worry beads.
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Beyond Images, 1963-1964

Lijn made the hand held Poem Wheels during a period when she lived in Greece in a house without electricity. Lijn was busy building the house and these were the first art works she made there. She thought they might be used the way Greek men used worry beads.
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Reflections Tableau 4, 1962

This series of works was inspired by reflections seen through a porthole on a trip from Brindisi to Greece in the summer of 1961. Lijn wanted to find a way to see luminous reflections which appeared like drops of water moving across a transparent window.
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Reflections Tableau 3, 1962

This series of works was inspired by reflections seen through a porthole on a trip from Brindisi to Greece in the summer of 1961. Lijn wanted to find a way to see luminous reflections which appeared like drops of water moving across a transparent window.
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Reflections Tableau 2, 1962

This series of works was inspired by reflections seen through a porthole on a trip from Brindisi to Greece in the summer of 1961. Lijn wanted to find a way to see luminous reflections which appeared like drops of water moving across a transparent window.
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Reflection Tableau 1, 1962

This series of works was inspired by reflections seen through a porthole on a trip from Brindisi to Greece in the summer of 1961. Lijn wanted to find a way to see luminous reflections which appeared like drops of water moving across a transparent window.
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Cuttings, 1962

Cuttings were a development of Lijn’s first experiments with clear acrylic, ‘Fire Lines’, and represent her first attempt to generate an energetic vibration through the use of repetitive elements.
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Small Cuttings, 1962

Cuttings were a development of Lijn’s first experiments with clear acrylic, ‘Fire Lines’, and represent her first attempt to generate an energetic vibration through the use of repetitive elements.
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Alphabet, 1962

Lijn wanted the word to be seen in movement, dissolving into a pure vibration until it became the energy of sound.
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Vibrographe, 1962 / 2019

Lijn felt that words, made from separate letters, were essentially structures made from lines, and therefore could be deconstructed into energetic vibrations in the same way as the Vibrographe.
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