Elliott Hundley - Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale New York Thursday, March 7, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Peres Projects, Los Angeles

  • Catalogue Essay

    Making a strong entrance a number of years ago, Elliot Hundley began a sweeping transformation of modern sculpture, employing a vast array of both historical influences and his own singular innovations. Hundley’s style has been alternatively categorized as a revival of Rauschenberg’s combines of the 1950s as well as evoking three dimensional representations of Cy Twombly’s whimsical and dreamlike paintings of the same period. However, Untitled, 2003, complicates both of these attributions. Its
    scale defines the superficial peripheries of an epic and infinitely complex world comprised of fragments of the everyday. The present lot is a wonder of micro-assemblage and a fascinating exploration into one of Hundley’s most defining features as an artist: his ability to suggest a narrative within abstraction, weaving eclectic materials into mythologies.

    The present lot, Untitled, 2003, exemplifies Hundley’s scope of materials, which includes silk, pens, needles, gels, and conventional watercolors, performing in an exceptional synchrony. Indeed, we can observe an nascent exuberance in this piece; his dreamlike surface saturated in thick layers of watercolor suggest a snowy plane laden with sweeping constructions of precarious elements. Hundley manages to construct several different spaces upon this plane without ever defining their intention. Painstakingly applied fragments of broken needle, straw, and shredded photographs lend a unique fragility to Untitled, 2003, while, the suggestion of scaffolding, waste sites, and soaring towers share the same possibilities. In this way, Hundley lends a gentle human element to his adamantine work. Hundley’s piece implies a thoughtful process through its suggestion of a dreamscape. The drama of a landscape spread in detail across a tiny surface demonstrates a multifaceted approach to object making, embracing the sensibilities of a Pop artist while infusing it with epic prose. Hundley’s exacting hand echoes varied forms of art history—the perfectionism of classical and historical painting, the rich coloring of Fauvism, and, of course, the canonical combines of Rauschenberg. Untitled, 2003 exhibits all of these diverse virtues in a precious few inches.

40

Garland

2003
photographs, plastic silk, pins, needles, plastic straws, wood, rubber bands, gel medium, aluminum, drawings, watercolor on board
48 x 72 in. (122 X 183 cm)

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $104,500

Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale

7 March 2013
New York