Lisson Gallery at TEFAF New York 2026
Sean Scully La Mer, 2026 Oil on copper 99.7 x 69.9 x 3.8 cm 39 1/4 x 27 1/2 x 1 1/2 in © Sean Scully, Courtesy Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery returned to TEFAF New York with a dual-artist presentation that brings together two of the most influential figures in contemporary art: Tony Cragg and Sean Scully. Spanning sculpture and painting, the presentation foregrounds new and recent works that explore the expressive potential of material, structure, and abstraction, while reflecting each artist’s decades-long commitment to rethinking the language of form.
Born in Liverpool in 1949 and based in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977, Tony Cragg has continually expanded the possibilities of sculpture through an open-ended engagement with materials and processes. His early stacked works and floor-based arrangements established a taxonomical approach to the world, where manmade objects function as “fossilized keys” to our present moment. These investigations blurred distinctions between natural and constructed environments, laying the foundation for a practice that examines how material form shapes human perception and emotion.
Installation view, Lisson Gallery’s TEFAF NY booth, 15 – 19 May 2026. © Courtesy Lisson Gallery
The presentation centers on two works from Cragg’s Incident series, one realized in Corten steel and the other in polished stainless steel, each articulating the series’ signature upright, anthropomorphic form. Through a rigorous process of carving and construction, these sculptures dissolve boundaries between interior and exterior, mass and void. While the Corten work emphasizes material density and a grounded, matte presence, the stainless-steel counterpart activates the surface through shifting reflections, heightening a sense of movement and optical fluidity.
In dialogue, Sean Scully presents two new paintings from his Wall of Light series—one on canvas and one on copper—alongside a beautiful new Landline work entitled, La Mer (2026). Born in Dublin in 1945 and raised in London, Scully moved to New York in 1975, where he played a pivotal role in shifting American abstraction beyond the reduced vocabulary of Minimalism toward a more emotional and natural mode. Drawing on a wide range of influences, his work synthesizes transatlantic traditions into a visual language that is both structured and deeply expressive.
Sean Scully Wall of Light Tappan Blue, 2026 Oil on linen 172.7 x 157.5 x 5.1 cm 68 x 62 x 2 in © Sean Scully, Courtesy Lisson Gallery
Inspired by the interplay of light and shadow on ancient architecture, the Wall of Light paintings translate memory into layered compositions of color, texture, and geometry, while in the Landline series Scully transforms his experience of the Irish seascape into stacked, gestural bands of color that distill layered perceptions of landscape into a sublime meditation on memory, emotion, and place; together, these works retain a notable intimacy, with shifting tonal relationships that evoke emotional and narrative depth and reflect his sustained engagement with abstraction as a vehicle for spirituality, experience, and the human condition.
Tony Cragg Incident (Vertical), 2022 Corten steel 230 x 84 x 94 cm 90 1/2 x 33 1/8 x 37 in © Tony Cragg, Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photo by Michael Richter.
Together, Cragg and Scully articulate parallel investigations into structure and sensation—one through the physical articulation of material, the other through the optical and emotional resonance of color and form. This dual presentation at TEFAF New York 2026 offers a rare opportunity to encounter two landmark practices in conversation, each grounded in a rich personal history yet continually evolving in response to the world around us.
About Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Today the gallery supports and promotes the work of more than 70 international artists across spaces in London, New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai. Established in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson Gallery pioneered the early careers of important Minimal and Conceptual artists such as Art & Language, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Robert Ryman among many others. It still works with many of these artists and others of that generation, from Carmen Herrera and Olga de Amaral to Hélio Oiticica and Lee Ufan. In its second decade the gallery introduced significant British sculptors to the public for the first time, including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary and Julian Opie. Since 2000, the gallery has gone on to represent many more leading international artists such as Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, John Akomfrah, Leiko Ikemura, Liu Xiaodong, Otobong Nkanga, Pedro Reyes, Sean Scully, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Wael Shawky. It is also responsible for raising the international profile of a younger generation of artists including Dana Awartani, Cory Arcangel, Garrett Bradley, Ryan Gander, Josh Kline, Hugh Hayden, Haroon Mirza, Laure Prouvost and Cheyney Thompson.
The gallery is at Booth 342, For more information about the artists represented by Lisson at TEFAF and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the Lisson Gallery here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. For more information about TEFAF, please visit their site here. The fair can also be found on Instagram here and on Facebook here.
