Phillips' London Modern & Contemporary Art team at the Berkeley Square gallery space.
Noah Davis
Noah Davis, Mitrice Richardson, 2012. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Imogen Bond, Administrator, Seller Services
Having recently seen Noah Davis’ major touring retrospective during its stop at the Barbican in London, I was really intrigued when I first heard that we were presenting a work by the artist in our Evening Sale this season. This is such a powerful painting — haunting, provocative, and seductive — Davis draws from reality to reveal more than meets the eye. The muted palette creates an atmosphere that is both intimate and unsettling. Inspired by real-life tragedy, the obscured figure reminds us of the silences, omissions, and systematic failures that have shaped the mystery surrounding the tragic story of Mitrice Richardson. Grappling with the long history of the painterly gaze and questions of representation, Davis draws attention to everyday and ongoing social injustices.
It invites us to confront uncomfortable questions: Whose stories are told? Whose lives are valued, and who is granted justice?
Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 x 143 cm, 14 août 2015, 2015. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Christopher Phang-Lee, Cataloguer
You can’t avoid the pure painterliness of Pierre Soulages’ Peinture 202 x 143 cm, 14 août 2015. A work of gleams and flux, flashes and gloss, it embodies the artist’s monumental and revolutionary Outrenoirs. Swipes shimmer and sweep across the textured surface, recalling a monochromatic seascape or abstracted geological layers. For Soulages, his overwhelming, all-encompassing use of black was not about individual form and gesture in the manner of American abstractionists Robert Motherwell or Franz Kline. Rather, as manipulated by his hands, it absorbs and refracts light in a discreet, contained way that shifts depending on our gaze and stance, enveloping and shrouding us within its cocoon. A minimalist masterwork that defies definition, this work radiates with a limitless glow: standing before it, every moment becomes a study, every reflection a refraction.
Flora Yukhnovich
Flora Yukhnovich, My Body knows Un-Heard of Songs, 2017. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Eloise Buchanan, Sale Manager, Modern & Contemporary Art London
If you’re familiar with the notion that pets and their owners share an uncanny resemblance, the very same can be said for Flora Yukhnovich’s beautiful painting, My Body knows Un-Heard of Songs — it is so absolutely of the artist. I love this picture. To me, it epitomises Yukhnovich's painterly dance on the edge of abstraction, inviting us to untangle the art historical references hidden in her highly idiosyncratic contribution to contemporary painting.
What struck me first looking at the painting was Yukhnovich’s fantastic brushwork — the fiery plumes of rose pinks and reds set against passages of tranquil blues are completely mesmerising. Quickly though, this flurry of brushstrokes settled, its distinct palette and compositional arrangement clearly a nod to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing, housed in the Wallace Collection here in London. The cascading dress plunging forwards, white tongue of paint in the shape of a hat, delicate satin slipper, and the poof of pink paint floating in the sky — an impastoed reference to her lost slipper, all little details that make this work so utterly charming and charged with the all the playful, erotic energy of Fragonard’s masterpiece. A glorious rendition of Rococo aesthetics reimagined for our own contemporary moment.
Jean-Michel Basquiat & Emma McIntyre
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1985. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Dr. Caroline Knighton, Associate Specialist, Senior Writer & Researcher
For my specialist pick I’m going to have to select two of my favourite works from the sale. The art historian in me is really intrigued by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled portrait from 1985. Basquiat painted so few portraits of women over his career, and this one really stands out as particularly sensitively rendered with this wonderfully economic but confidently vibrant sense of line and colour. It says a lot about the persistence of Basquiat’s power as a painter — on a first impression the work is so sparse and gives very little away, and yet the longer we spend with it the more we start to draw on a deeper and much complex set of associations ranging from Basquiat’s long-standing interest in human anatomy, his deep reverence and interrogation of antiquity and the art historical canon, and more personal connections from his intimate circle in the mid-80s.
Emma McIntyre, Seven types of ambiguity, 2021. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
For sheer painterly joy I would have to pick Emma McIntyre’s Seven types of ambiguity. I love its expansive, immersive scale; standing in front of it you’re completely absorbed by its rich chromatic intensity and carried away with its gestural energy and complex internal rhythms. She’s such an exciting painter who is looking really closely at 20th century art history — all that chromatic intensity of Pierre Bonnard, the atmospheric presence of Claude Monet, and the energy and embodied exuberance of Joan Mitchell.
Sasha Gordon & Steven Shearer
Sasha Gordon, Drive Through, 2019. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Charlotte Gibbs, Head of Auctions & Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
Sasha Gordon is one of the most exciting young painters working in the US today, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to spend time with her 2019 painting, Drive Through, in our galleries. Graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, Gordon’s work was celebrated in 2023 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, in her first museum show. The following year she made headlines as the youngest artist represented by David Zwirner at just 26 years old. Often placing her own body or rendering a likeness of herself within the figures and faces depicted in her uncanny compositions, her skill at capturing the textural and malleable qualities of skin and flesh in oil have garnered significant critical attention in recent years. Although suspended in liminal, dreamlike spaces, her hyperreal subjects truly encapsulate the broad essence of human emotion, whether anxiety, awkwardness or desire. Her first exhibition at David Zwirner, titled Haze, opened on 25 September and runs through 1 November.
Steven Shearer, Synthist, 2018. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Celebrated cult painter Steven Shearer’s Synthist is a gem within our sale. His subjects, punks, metalheads and grungy figures from angsty subcultures, are drawn from unconventional sources such as the DIY aesthetic of the underground music scene, and from his own adolescent memories coming of age within the grungy subcultures of suburban Canada. Like the titular Synthist, Shearer himself draws upon a wide array of art historical references and deftly incorporates them into his composition, manipulating and reshaping to create a new and unique visual language. From Edvard Munch to German Expressionism, Shearer’s figures exist in an ambiguous and ethereal space, encapsulating both the sense of belonging and marginalization felt during these pivotal and rebellious adolescent years. A musician himself and follower of heavy metal, Shearer’s Synthist is a timeless reminder of youthful and unbridled garage band spirit.
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