Liane Lang

Liane Lang was born in Munich, Germany and lives and works in London. After completing a BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College she went to The Royal Academy Schools where she graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art in 2006.

Since graduation she has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. She has undertaken numerous residencies including Memento Sculpture Park in Budapest where she created the series Monumental Misconceptions. Lang’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Saatchi Collection and Deutsche Bank.

Recent exhibitions include a two person show at Art First Projects, House Guests a solo exhibition of a major new installation at WW Gallery and Afternoon Tea at the Venice Biennale. 2011 also saw the installation of a permanent public commission for Croydon Council.

Lang’s work takes the form of photography, film and installation. The work is engaged in staging visual and conceptual interruptions to monuments and interiors. Her work is often peopled with figures, life-like yet not real, which she creates in the studio. She poses these semi-inhabitants in historical spaces and with monuments and statues, creating narratives and references to historic individuals and events.

The work interrogates the role of figurative sculpture, often imbued with special powers, such as religious figures, which become the subject of devotion, political monuments which come to embody on a large scale the dictator represented. Recent series of works have focused on Iconoclasm, the destruction of hated dictators by the mob or the destruction of the symbols of one regime by another.

Re-framing and re-contextualising these objects and spaces is used as an oblique strategy to re-activate histories and memories and to allow the objects to shake off the visual and ideological cliché, revealing buried atmosphere and characteristics.

Europe (Albert Memorial) 2011, shows Germania, Europe and Britannia serenely rendered in marble but threatened by a rising tide. The work is a photo gravure and was made at the RA Schools print room.

Lang's work reveals the spectres that haunt familiar things, drawing on inherent hidden qualities, the funny and strange, the disgusting and the sensual.

Education
2006 Royal Academy Schools, Postgraduate
1998 Goldsmiths’ College, London, BA Hons. Fine Art
1995 National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Foundation Course

Solo Shows
2011 The Long Way Home, permanent Public Commission for Croydon Council
2011 House Guests, WW Gallery, London
2010 Monumental Misconceptions, KvH Projects, London,
2010 Shadows and Stowaways with Squid/Tabernacle, Dalston, London
2010 Mesmeric Monument at Supernova Gallery, Riga Talks accompanying the exhibition at KIM Institute, supported by the British Council, catalogue
2009 Public Commission, Portobello Road, RBKC
2008 Artist at Apsley, Flora Fairbairn Projects
2007 Fondling Germanicus, Kunstverein Heidelberg
2006 Verisimilitude, T1+2 Artspace, London
2001 Offspace, Vienna, new video work, Austria
2001 Southfirst Art, new video work, New York

Selected Group Shows
2012 Flights Of Fancy, Babylon Cinema Berlin
2011 Artfirst Projects, new photography, with Rasha Kahil
2011 Works on Paper, WW Gallery at the Venice Bienale
2011 The Sexual Object, Salon-Vert Gallery, London
2010 Heft, Winchester Discovery Centre, curated by Tony Hayward
2010 Flaming July, Leighton House Museum

2010 Strangeness and Charm, Fieldgate Gallery at The Last Tuesday Society
2009 Is there anybody there? WilsonWilliams Gallery, London

2009 The Apartment, curated by Paul Buck

2009 Merriscourt, curated by Flora Fairbairn

2008 Super Cilia, Royal Liver Building, Liverpool

2008 Lucifers Greatest War, FRED Gallery, Leibzig

2008 Gothic, Fieldgate Gallery, London

2007 Zoo Art Fair 05/06/07, Royal Academy of Art, T1+2 Art Space

2007 Anticipation, One One One Gallery, Flora Fairbairn Projects 

2007 ArtFutures, Bloomberg Space, London

2005 Go-Between, Kunstverein Bregenz, Austria

2005 Sesiones Animadas, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid

2004 Mementoes and Other Curiosities, London

2003 Kunstwerke, Berlin, Animations

2002 Liverpool Biennial, PoT

2001 Animations, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre, New York

2001 New Labour, Saatchi Gallery, London

Work in Collections
Deutsche Bank Collection
Royal Academy Collection
White Cube Gallery
Ernst & Young Collection
Arts Council Of England Collection
Saatchi Collection
DEM Collection
Collection Kunstverein Bregenz
numerous private collections

Awards
2006 Selina Cheneviere Fellowship
2006 Hugh Merrell Dissertation Award
2005 Henry Moore Foundation Production Award
2005 SPS Award
2002 London Arts Board Production Award
1999 Tooth Travel Award

Publications
2010 October, Eyemazing Magazine, Amsterdam
2010 Monumental Misconceptions, Liane Lang, Catalogue
2008 Super Cilia, catalogue, essay by Anouchka Grose
2005 Go-Between, published by Kunstverein Bregenz/ Magazin 4
2002 Animations, published by Kunstwerke, Berlin and PS1, New York
2001 ‘New Labour’, published by The Saatchi Gallery, essay by Patricia Ellis
1999 ‘The Saatchi Decade’, New Anthology of Saatchi Acquisitions, Booth Clibborn

• Royal Academy of Arts