Kevin Appel - NOW: Art of the 21st Century Theme Sale New York Saturday, March 6, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Wilkinson Gallery, London

  • Catalogue Essay


    Kevin Appel’s new paintings depict a world so fractured that it’s hard to imagine the damage ever being
    repaired. Psychological trauma and social unrest ripple across the smooth surfaces of his canvases, revealing
    the artist to be a sharp-eyed Realist whose uncompromising work is all the stronger for being metaphorical
    and suggestive. […] Raw anxiety and gut-tightening dread percolate beneath the deceptively antiseptic
    surfaces of those loaded paintings, suggesting a diabolical alliance between Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
    and the Unabomber. Appel’s new paintings […] dive deeper into the potential for violence—both natural
    and otherwise—that defines a nation gripped by fear and driven by the desire to obliterate terrorism. […]
    The blunt-force trauma that Appel’s paintings make palpable is not the whole story. He crafts his canvases
    with consummate care and labor-intensive devotion, building their compositions with considerable delicacy,
    unassuming felicity and formal sophistication. Their circle-the-wagons atmosphere attests to a type of go-italone
    defiance made famous by all types of survivors, both real and mythical.
    D. Pagel, “Not just divided but violently ripped apart,” Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2004

242

Country Home #4 (Dreamer)

2006
Oil, enamel, acrylic on canvas over panel.
77 x 80 in. (195.6 x 203.2 cm).
Signed, titled and dated "Kevin Appel Country Home 3 (Dreamer) 2006" on the reverse.

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $12,500

NOW: Art of the 21st Century Theme Sale

6 March 2010
New York