About the Artwork

Houshiary’s sculpture ‘String Quintet’ comprises five spiralling stainless steel ribbons that appear to unravel from the ground, rising at different wavelengths, intertwining and weaving gently upwards. The changing daylight animates and dissolves the sculpture’s fluid ascent. The sculpture exceeds the limits of its material form by replicating itself in shadows: spidery boughs mimicking metallic limbs in an endless dance of light.

Year: 2011


Copyright the artist, courtesy of Lisson Gallery, London. Photo © Robb Mcrae

Material

cast stainless steel

Dimensions

500 cm high

Artist Biography

Shirazeh Houshiary

Shirazeh Houshiary was born in Iran in 1955. She moved to London in 1974, where she currently lives and works, and studied at Chelsea School of Art. She was a junior Fellow at Cardiff College of Art from1979–1980 and was awarded the title of Professor at the London Institute in 1997. Houshiary quickly became established at the forefront of a new generation of sculptors working in Britain in the 1980s, and her work was subsequently included in important group exhibitions such as Aperto ’82, XL Venice Biennale in 1982, and ‘Les Magiciens de la Terre’ at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris in 1989. In 1984, she produced her first solo exhibition at the Lisson Gallery where she has continued to show regularly. The Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve, organised a solo presentation for the Musée Rath, Geneva in 1988, which toured to the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1989. Further solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Camden Arts Centre, London (1993) and Tate Liverpool (2003) among others. Her exhibition, Isthmus, was first shown at Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, before touring to the Museum Villa Stuck München, the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, and Hochschule für Angewandete Kunst Vienna in 1995–1996. Her work has been included in the XXIII Bienal de São Paulo (1996); ’10 Intensita In Europa’, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, (1998); ‘Skultur: A Brick Invention’, Basel, 2000; the Skulptur Biennial Münsterland, (2003); ‘Art and Happiness’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2003); ‘Turning Points 20th Century British Sculpture’, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (2004); ‘Without Boundary’, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); ‘What is Painting’, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007); Deloitte Ignite, Royal Opera House, London (2008); ‘Between Metaphor and Object’, IMMA, Dublin (2009); Sydney Biennale (2010); 13th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2012); The First Kyiv International Biennale (2012). Houshiary was nominated for the Turner Prize by the Tate Gallery in 1994. Her work is included in prestigious public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Collection, London and Qatar Museums Authority Collection.