Richard Pettibone Chicken Noodle Soup from Andy Warhol, "Campbell's Soup Cans," 1962, 1987.
Estimate: $5,000-7,000. Offered in Current Mood.
Phillips is excited to present Current Mood, one in a series of cross-category, online-only auctions held throughout April and May. In an age where we are rapidly bombarded by advertisements, tweets, texts, pop-ups, email and alerts, Online Sales Property Manager, Fred Blauth considers three artists in Current Mood who also have something to say.
David Shrigley
David Shrigley Untitled (Nut House), 2015. Estimate: $4,000-6,000.
If there was ever a time for contemporary artist David Shrigley’s quintessential black humor, now would be great, thanks. Best known for his crude drawing style paired with sharp-witted captions, Shrigley’s artwork is a conduit for the human condition. When asked about how he finds his words, the British artist has stated that he often creates images first, later adding captions in response. In Untitled (Nut House) we’re given two macabre options: weather the storm outside or be locked up in the asylum. Like a “Get Well Soon Card!” received post humorously, Shrigley knows just what to say at the wrong time. When I look at his work, I’m reminded of how Magritte uses words to point to “the treachery of images” or how Duane Michals’ ordinary black and white photographs become dream-like fantasies after he scrawls his captions below them.
Sarah Morris
Sarah Morris Mental, 1995. Estimate: $7,000-10,000.
Sarah Morris is known for her geometric, abstract paintings that draw inspiration from sprawling city infrastructure and architecture. She obscures how we as humans design, navigate and inhabit these spaces by playing with the colors, lines and shapes used in these fields. At first glance, Mental, made towards the beginning of Morris’s career in the mid-1990s, may seem incongruous to the artist’s oeuvre. But what would a word look like if it was a place? Sharp, 90-degree deadends and san serif roadways, Mental is a volatile, fluorescent green maze that exposes the graphic structure of language, speech and text. Barbara Kruger is an obvious comparison to Morris’s text pieces, for both are loud and urgent. But I also think of Tauba Auerbach’s investigation into letters and symbols —how fonts can also express feelings too, not just the words themselves.
Mel Bochner
Mel Bochner Blah, Blah, Blah, 2010. Estimate: $10,000-15,000.
Like Morris, American conceptual artist Mel Bochner also slows down the way we read. In oscillating colors, and thick, blocky letters, the artist’s seminal phrase, “Blah, Blah, Blah” is dynamic and fresh in the presented monotype, practically an antonym for the phrase itself (borning, without meaningful content). To achieve the work’s rich, relief-like quality, Bochner collaborates with Two Palms print studio, where thick layers of oil paint are slathered into plexiglass plates and then pressed to handmade paper. Letter by letter, Blah Blah Blah confronts the dangers of empty language and how we communicate today. When I read a Bochner, I think of Christopher Wool and his manifesto-esque, grand statements, both artists using the written word to play with the scale of their voices.