In these artworks the line isn't always confined to a piece of canvas or paper, instead lines become installations with depth and volume or conceptual experiments. In Polish artist Monika Grzymala's site-specific Raumzeichnung (outside/inside) over four miles of black and clear tape are given sculptural form, giving the illusion of a 3D structure that stretches from the back of the gallery to the front window. "I describe all of my installations as architectural interventions or spatial drawings, in German Raumzeichnung and in English, Spatial Drawing," Grzymala explains.Sometimes the line is more minimalistic and pragmatic like Ceal Floyer's Taking a Line for a Walk, a nod to Paul Klee's“A line is a point, which goes for a walk… An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal.” Itfeatures a painted white line, the type seen on sports fields, running through the gallery and up the stairs spilling out across the steps until it ends next to the apparatus that created it, a line-making machine.
The exhibition also features some personal history for the gallery. Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing 157 which was first drawn onto the walls of the Lisson gallery under the instruction of LeWitt by the gallery's founder Nicholas Logsdail back in 1973. For Line the diagonal stroke in a sqaure has been redrawn onto the wall and, as the Drawing Room's directors Mary Doyle and Kate Macfarlane point out in the text that accompanies the exhibition, it was LeWitt who said, "Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line."Line is open now until 12 March 2016 at Lisson Gallery, 52 Bell Street, London
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