The Lisson show is so hermetic, sometimes we flounder for meaning

The title of the Lisson Gallery’s new show, Nostalgic for the Future, could sum up the gallery’s whole raison d’être. From its inception in 1967, the Lisson has championed the cutting edge, providing a British and European platform for the major conceptual and minimal artists from the States — Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin among them — and following that in the 1980s with its promotion of New British Sculptors such as Anish Kapoor and Tony Cragg. While this generation wittily subverted the material world to question our position within it, their heirs in turn seem more interested in querying the position of art in the world — still subversive, but more hermetically so. There’s an anomie in the most recent works here by Haroon Mirza, Ceal Floyer and Ryan Gander that arguably turns in on itself, leaving the viewer floundering for meaning. So, here we have something of a smorgasbord — a reconfigured version of the show originally staged in Sao Paulo to present Lisson’s impressive line-up of artists in some meaningful pattern of influence and inspiration.