Mark Grotjahn - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, November 15, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
    The Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium
    Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, The Vanmoerkerke Collection, London, April 3, 2008, lot 28
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Mark Grotjahn’s signature butterfly pattern electrifies as it expands upon natural and organic design. The bi-winged drawing, rendered here in painstaking detail, draws our attention to its double center, the lines elude our expectation of our point of perspective. Delicate black lines radiate from the center of Untitled (Cream Butterfly Thin Black Lines # 673), 2007, across a soft cream-colored background. The fine lines are each arduously executed as they fan out from two starting points on the paper. Two horizontal bold lines divide the work into halves; while similar, each is distinct as the designs pulsate from their respective vanishing points with harmonious tension. The halves seem symmetrical; however, clouds of ebony streaks appear towards the outer edges. The irregularity and imperfections of the clusters juxtaposed with the clean lines challenge the illusion before us; the seemingly perfect surface is disrupted, cracked, broken apart by the unruly billows. Our very notions of perspective, geometry, and color relationships are denounced by the brilliant impossibility of Untitled (Cream Butterfly Thin Black Lines # 673), 2007.

4

Untitled (Cream Butterfly Thin Black Lines # 673)

2007
colored pencil on paper
72 x 47 7/8 in. (182.9 x 121.6 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated "#673 Untitled (Cream Butterfly Thin Black Lines) 2007 Mark Grotjahn" on the reverse; further inscribed “Top All Cream” on the reverse.

Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 

Sold for $734,500

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

15 November 2012
New York