Anne Collier - Photographs London Wednesday, November 1, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Anton Kern Gallery, New York, 2008

  • Exhibited

    Anne Collier, UK, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 22 January - 27 March 2011
    Anne Collier, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, 22 November 2014 - 8 March 2015; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2 April - 15 July 2015; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 23 September 2015 - 10 January 2016
    Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 20 November 2015 - 6 March 2016
    For another

  • Literature

    M. Darling, ed., Anne Collier, Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014, p. 76

  • Catalogue Essay

    'This tension – between what is depicted and the nature of its depiction – is central to my approach.'
    Anne Collier

    Photographing found objects and appropriated imagery, Anne Collier questions the ways these images are presented and perceived, aiming to elicit ‘a sense of emotional or psychological uncertainty’ through her image-making process. In Eye (Enlargement of a Color Negative), 2007, she has photographed an open book, revealing a page with a full-bleed close up of a woman’s bright green eye with mascara painted eyelashes. She flattens the three-dimensional quality of the book by presenting it against a plain black background and cutting off the edge of the facing page. Eliminating many of the visual clues that identify what we are seeing, Collier’s approach to editing and framing is seemingly detached. This act of distancing herself, and in turn, the viewer from the physicality of existing objects creates a tension between what we see and how we perceive it.

    Influenced by the work of Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and other ‘Pictures Generation’ artists, Collier questions and re-contextualises popular imagery and visual clichés as seen in the present work. Collier argues that in relation to photographic image making, the eye, a recurring motif in her work, ‘remains a compelling analogous image, simply because the camera approximates the mechanics of the eye and seeing to such an extraordinary degree.’ She challenges how photography structures our ways of seeing by drawing our attention to these mechanics. The title Eye (Enlargement of a Color Negative) connotes the darkroom processes, making us aware that we are looking at a photograph of a photograph. In this striking image of an eye, Collier transforms the object into the subject and asks us to join her in analysing the process of presentation and perception.

    Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Collier studied at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), working with leading West Coast artists John Baldessari and Christopher Williams, among others. In 2014-2015, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, held her first major institutional exhibition, which included another print of this image. Her work is held in such prominent institutions as Tate Modern, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

39

Eye (Enlargement of Color Negative)

2007
Chromogenic print, flush-mounted.
Image: 119.4 x 133.4 cm (47 x 52 1/2 in.)
Frame: 129.5 x 144.1 cm (51 x 56 3/4 in.)

Signed in ink, printed title, date and number 1/5 on an artist label accompanying the work.

This work is number 1 from the sold-out edition of 5 + 2 AP. This image exists only in this size and edition. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York holds another print of this image.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for £37,500

Contact Specialist
Genevieve Janvrin
Co-Head of Photographs, Europe
+44 20 7901 7996

Yuka Yamaji
Co-Head of Photographs, Europe
+44 20 7318 4098

Photographs

London Auction 2 November 2017