Lineage
22—25 April 2026, 2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11
Lineage
22—25 April 2026,
2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11
Bringing together fifteen artists who are united by their devotion to line and form, Lineage opens up an international and intergenerational dialogue, which reveals Minimalism to be a living and evolving language that continues to shape contemporary artistic practices today. Anchored by leading figures of American and European Minimalist art, the exhibition traces a genealogy of ideas that extends well beyond the rigid formalism often associated with the movement, and demonstrates how diverse understandings of space, materiality, and process have generated an unexpectedly elastic and emotionally resonant field. The origins of this exhibition are rooted in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the curator of the show, Jessica Zambeletti, discovered a set of six Fred Sandback lithographs, dating from 1975. Composed of sparse blue lines that dart across handmade paper, the prints suggest delineated edges and expansive planes through the slightest of interventions, translating the concerns of Sandback's celebrated yarn sculptures into two dimensions. Their extraordinary economy encapsulates the exhibition's central question: how much can a line carry?
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Lineage argues, implicitly but persuasively, for the continued importance of slow looking – an insistence that feels particularly relevant in the present moment, when visual culture is increasingly dominated by algorithmically legible spectacles and endless pressures to consume. The exhibition thus reminds us that abstraction can still function as a critical and contemplative practice capable of resisting the saturation of contemporary image culture. Small shifts in tone, line, and materiality acquire enormous significance across this extraordinary selection of works, which repeatedly surprise the viewer with their vulnerability, tenderness, and optimism.
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