UK CTA July 2014 Highlights

PHILLIPS ANNOUNCES HIGHLIGHTS FROM LONDON JULY EVENING AND DAY CONTEMPORARY AUCTIONS

FEATURING WORKS BY ANDY WARHOL, ANISH KAPOOR, RICHARD PRINCE, STERLING RUBY, WADE GUYTON, MARK BRADFORD, RUDOLF STINGEL, TAUBA AUERBACH, ADRIANA VAREJAO, ANSELM KIEFER, BANKSY AND ED RUSCHA.

EVENING AUCTION: 2 JULY 2014, 7PM
DAY AUCTION: 3 JULY 2014, 2PM
VIEWING: 21 JUNE – 2 JULY Phillips, Howick Place, London SW1P 1BB
AUCTION LOCATION: Phillips, Howick Place, London SW1P 1BB

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LONDON – 25 June 2014 – Phillips is pleased to announce highlights from the forthcoming Contemporary Auctions, featuring 187 lots with a combined pre-sale estimate of £11,622,000 / $19,731,000 / €14,495,000 to £16,760,000 / $28,460,000 / €20,903,000

The Contemporary Art Evening Sale will offer 29 lots at a pre-sale low estimate of £8,100,000 / $13,751,000 / €10,103,000 and a pre-sale high estimate of £11,650,000 / $19,785,000 / €14,530,000.

“We are delighted to be able to offer a fresh mix of high quality young, mid career and established artists in our Contemporary Art Evening sale. We are particularly pleased to bring to market a perfect example of Andy Warhol’s Self- Portrait (Fright Wig) at an estimate of £2.5-3.5 million.” Peter Sumner, Head of Contemporary Art, London.

ANDY WARHOL
Self-Portrait, 1986
ESTIMATE £2,500,000 – 3,500,000
Andy Warhol spent the majority of his artistic career exploring the glamorisation of American culture. His recognisable portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy are steeped in vivid colours of the 1960’s Pop scene. Focusing his efforts on the portraits of celebrities, Warhol ignored his own growing popularity as the king of Pop Art.

Warhol had a deep frustration with his appearance and a life-long obsession with his public image. By the late 1980s he had subjected his physical image to operations and treatments, transforming it from its earlier state. The most recognizable of his features, however, remained his shock of peroxide hair, provided by his extensive collection of “fright wigs.” What is so remarkable about this Self-Portrait series is that Warhol displays himself with severe starkness and brutal honesty, confronting the viewer in its bold composition. Warhol’s peroxide hair creates a kind of halo as if foretelling his fate the following year.

In the presentation of his aged face, one cannot help but see Warhol’s inevitable and impending sickness. In fact, Warhol passed away the following February, soon after the completion of the painting. As perhaps the most iconic portrait painter, the importance of Warhol’s self-depiction can be seen as providing a momento mori, a lasting part of his undeniable genius.

ANISH KAPOOR
Untitled, 2008
ESTIMATE £600,000 – 800,000
Kapoor has referred to himself as “Mr. In-Between” due to the myriad of cultural influences that have shaped his life. Born in Mumbai, he was already pulled by divergent traditions as his mother was Jewish and his father Hindu. His early life, therefore, was distinguished by its rich layers of heritage and influence, which later influenced his artistic output.

Kapoor embraces his Indian, Hindu, Jewish and British history, producing work which is a product of this unique fusion. In Untitled, the influence of his Indian heritage is expressed through reference to an Indian philosophy and attitude to art making.

This stainless-steel work demonstrates Kapoor’s commitment to erasing all evidence of the traditional notion of the artist’s hand through its strict, geometric structure which lacks the imperfections indicative of the man-made. Kapoor plays on tensions between presence and absence, real and imaginary space and the material and the immaterial in Untitled. The polarities are explored in Kapoor’s work in the use of the physical object, in this case highly polished and fragmented stainless steel, to represent the metaphysical.

RICHARD PRINCE
My Life as a Weapon, 2007
ESTIMATE £550,000 – 750,000
Richard Prince’s Joke Painting series began in the late 1980s, when he wrote a joke on a piece of paper and hung it up, realizing that he would have been envious if another artist had beaten him to it.

Prince’s jokes, which tend to meld seeming banality with satire, poking fun at family, religion, and his relationships with women. The humor of these once cartoonish jokes seems to have all but disappeared in their new guise as conceptual art.

My Life as a Weapon is an iconic example from the oeuvre of this cutting-edge artist. It particularly represents the artist’s shifted interest from appropriated images to text. The autobiographical tone of this particular lot takes it to another level, revealing attitudes and tensions that are usually kept buried beneath the surface of social interactions.

STERLING RUBY
SP33, 2008
ESTIMATE £500,000 - 700,000
Sterling Ruby’s work, SP33 is regarded as a reaction to and rejection of the minimalist artistic tradition. He has been proclaimed by contemporary art critics as one of the most interesting artists to emerge in the twentieth century due to his examination of the psychological sphere in which expression confronts constraint. Ruby’s works are clearly influenced by the ubiquity of urban graffiti and the artist’s works often appear defaced, camouflaged and disfigured. The artist has cited a diverse range of influences and sources in his oeuvre; such as psychological diseases, hip-hop culture, public art, waste, decline and consumption.

WADE GUYTON
Untitled, 2007
ESTIMATE £500,000 - 700,000
Untitled, from 2007, is the “ostensibly black monochrome” work by Wade Guyton that employs a pared down visual vocabulary and an Epson printer to investigate the relationships between technology, printing and painting. Guyton’s work plays on the disparity between the image created on the screen and that produced by the printer; between the idea and its materialisation. The relationship between the two is confounded by Guyton’s use of primed linen rather than paper, resulting in a struggle between material and printer which is made visible through the smudges, skids and uneven distribution of ink.

MARK BRADFORD
An Opening On The Left, 2010
ESTIMATE £400,000 - 600,000
In An Opening on the Left, Bradford masters his trademark additive and subtractive process of collage and decollage which allows him to create a grid-like composition that evokes the aerial view of Los Angeles, whose structural integrity is being challenged. The artist paints, bleaches, tears, sands and embellishes his materials that through improvisation and accident make up utopian abstractions that are not only formally inventive but that are also able to transmit the real sense of everyday life.

RUDOLF STINGEL
Untitled, 2012
ESTIMATE £400,000 - 600,000
Rudolf Stingel’s piece, Untitled, is characterized by his interrogation of the medium of painting – redefining and pushing its boundaries. Stingel refers to his work as ‘painting’ regardless of the materials he uses, which have ranged from carpet to Styrofoam across his extensive oeuvre. Untitled, from 2012, is no exception, despite consisting of copper, the work takes on the feeling of a painted work particularly, in the surface texture. This work epitomises Stingel’s highly visual yet conceptual approach to art, bringing together aesthetic qualities of the surface with postmodern concerns regarding the status of painting.

TAUBA AUERBACH
Untitled (Fold), 2012
ESTIMATE £250,000 - 350,000
Tauba Auerbach draws much of her inspiration from mathematics and physics, her visual output intersects equally with the perennial themes of art history. Conceptually, Untitled (Fold) alludes to the ancient pictorial tradition of representing drapery and folded cloth associated with historically prominent European artists. By ostensibly avoiding narrative and making the surface itself the subject of the work, the artist emphasises, in a manner reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, the illusory nature of painting itself.

Auerbach’s work astutely reassesses not only the boundaries between written language and meaning, but also the binary oppositions between flatness and three-dimensionality, order and disorder.

Untitled (Fold,) is an exquisite illustration of these investigations; its form oscillates between the supposedly incompatible second and third dimension, thus challenging the viewer to confront the distinctions between image, dimensionality and content.

ADRIANA VAREJÃO
A Grande Curva, 2010
ESTIMATE £200,000 - 300,000
A Grande Curva, executed in 2010, is an extension of Varejão’s Celacanto Provoca Maremoto and Sauna series. Coated with a mixture of plaster and glue, then painted over in oils, the cracked surface evokes the texture of Chinese celadon and ceramic. In this work, Varejão transmits her interest in the geometric shape and its power to evoke movement and sensuality. The blue, flowing forms in her work allude to nature and running water.

The weighty, pervasive themes of Anselm Kiefer’s artistic production are reflected in the monumental size of much of his work, such as in this lot, the scale of which is such that it engulfs the viewer’s field of vision. Alexandria acquires an intense physical presence by means of the heavy, distressed textures created by the unusual use of medium, which relates to the artist’s fundamental interest in alchemy and the natural elements.

The Contemporary Art Day Sale carries a pre-sale low estimate of £3,522,000 / $5,980,000 / €4,392,000 and a pre-sale high estimate of £5,110,000 / $8,675,000 / €6,373,000 and will offer over 150 lots.

“We are pleased to offer our own unique mix of works by established and emerging artists in our July Contemporary Art Day Sale. In amongst the sale, highlights by emerging artists include works by Israel Lund, Louis Eisner, Jeff Elrod, Aaron Bobrow, and David Ostrowski. We are delighted to offer to auction for the first time works by highly sought after artists Christian Rosa, Ethan Cook; also a work by Petra Cortright who was first offered at auction in our Paddles ON! sale in New York last year. Amongst the highlights from established artists we are proud to present works by Sam Francis, George Condo and Mario Schifano.” Henry Highley, Head of Contemporary Art Day Sale, London.

GEORGE CONDO
The Young Sailor, 2012
ESTIMATE £150,000 - 250,000

MARIO SCHIFANO
Untitled, 1971
ESTIMATE £120,000 - 180,000

SAM FRANCIS
Join the Chaos (SFF.1628), 1990
ESTIMATE £100,000 - 150,000

ISRAEL LUND
Untitled, 2013
ESTIMATE £20,000 - 30,000

CHRISTIAN ROSA
Ruff Neck, 2013
ESTIMATE £10,000 - 15,00

ETHAN COOK
Untitled, 2013
ESTIMATE £6,000 - 8,000

PHILLIPS: Phillips has established a commanding position in the sale of Photographs, Contemporary Art, Design, Editions and Jewelry. Through the passionate dedication of its team of global specialists, Phillips has garnered an unparalleled wealth of knowledge of emerging market trends. Phillips conducts auctions in New York and London and has representative offices throughout Europe and in the United States. For more information, please visit: phillips.com.

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