Tauba Auerbach - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, October 15, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Jack Hanley Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    “The entire point of making art, to me, is newness and to expand your mind, even in some tiny way.” - Tauba Auerbach

    “For the last two years I have tried to conjure four-dimensional space. The Fold paintings are my effort to construct a portal through which to summon - or at least imagine - this inaccessible hyper-spatial reality.” - Tauba Auerbach


    Tauba Auerbach’s elegant and captivating compositions deconstruct the conformist ways of how visual and abstract information is conveyed. Her oeuvre is a true testament to the dynamic platform abstract art has become within the contemporary art world, shifting from a painting tradition that was once seen as fundamentally reductive to one that can now be perceived as expansive, integrating modern technology and pop culture within its practice.


    Alluring and hypnotic, Auerbach’s fold paintings investigate what the artist refers to as the ‘2.5th dimension’, one that oscillates between the flat panelled two dimensional they lay on and the three dimensional illusion they construct. The fascinating process used to produce these compositions reaffirms the artist’s physical manipulation of the canvas by folding and rolling it. The canvas is subsequently laid on a flat plane, ironed, and its surface painted using an industrial spray gun at different angles to capture the nuance of the folds with the colour. The outcome is a mesmerizing painting with a spectrum of colours that emphasizes a ‘modern day’ trompe l’oeil effect. From afar, the work is characterised by volume, shadows and an undulating surface of wrinkled fabric; however on closer inspection, the folds wondrously fade away only to reveal a smooth canvas that is rigidly tightened over the stretcher. The present lot is given subtle blue and red celestial shades which, together with the magical three dimensional effect, transport the viewer in an inaccessible hyper-spatial reality where light has serendipitously come into existence.


    Her works operate in a space influenced by abstract , conceptual and graphic art, yet they are innovative in their execution and Opt-art effects. Moreover, the artist shows how the development of contemporary art has allowed pure forms to be replaced by hybrid constructions. Influences by artists such as Steven Parrino are also evident as she presents an innovative interpretation of the American artist’s twisted monochromatic works. As expressed by the artist herself: “I’m a really big fan of Steven Parrino. Sometimes I think about what I am doing with my fold paintings as sort of a ‘reverse Parrino’.” (Tauba Auerbach quoted in ‘built upon an Anagram – Interview withartist Tauba Auerbach’, Dossier Journal. Online).


    Auerbach’s works have been a continuous search and fascination to fuse contrary states of order and chaos into a cohesive whole, an idea wholly present in this lot. As with her text pieces, her abstract works are about “merging opposites or conflicting states – and through that, questioning the idea of a logical violation or the idea of logic in general.” (Tauba Auerbach quoted in ‘built upon an Anagram – Interview with artist Tauba Auerbach’, Dossier Journal. Online). In the present lot, the opposing states that come into play are plentiful: flatness and three dimensionality, order and chaos as well as permeability and solidity. Each of these is fused into a unified state that is aesthetically beautiful, as well as conceptually avant-garde, where the surface itself becomes the subject of the work, thus leaving the narrative entirely up to the viewers’ instinctive feelings and reactions to it.

3

Untitled (Fold)

2011
acrylic on canvas
121.9 x 91.4 cm. (48 x 36 in.)
Signed and dated 'TAUBA AUERBACH 2011' on the overlap.

Estimate
£250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for £500,500

Contact Specialist
Peter Sumner
Head of Contemporary Art, London
psumner@phillips.com
+44 207 318 4063

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London 16 October 2013