Tauba Auerbach - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Sunday, November 8, 2015 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Deitch Projects, New York
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Transcending a “…liminal state between two or three dimensions,” Tauba Auerbach’s impressive Fold paintings embody a masterful synthesis of painterly industrial technique and careful consideration of the mathematical and physical principles governing nature. (L. Yablonsky, “Women’s Work”, T Magazine, February 22, 2010) Concerned with the representational connotations of her practice, both calculated and spontaneous, Auerbach explores the visual paradox emerging from the tension between concealed regularity and apparent disorder, illuminating the innumerable patterns produced in spontaneity. Part trompe l’oeil, part geometry, and part classical realism, Tauba Auerbach’s incomparable Folds simultaneously confound and entice, challenging yet embracing the gestural and formulaic methodologies of her artistic predecessors.

    The elegant folded lines of Untitled (Fold), 2010 ripple across the surface with a rhythmic and supple fluidity. Like a prism, the iridescent chartreuse and fuchsias are reflected and enhanced in the interplay of light and shadow. Auerbach's skillful application of paint renders the shadows of an undulating surface of folded fabric, perfectly sumptuous and tangible. From afar, it is voluminous, furrowed and tactile. Shimmering across the canvas, prismatic sage and olive tones combine in a subtle polychromed symphony - a colorfully harmonious composition enlivened by a dynamic dialogue between linearity and luminosity. The optical illusion of Auerbach’s folds challenges the eye’s visual reality; tactile yet otherworldly in its shimmering aura, Untitled (Fold) succeeds in transcending the abstract idiom in subtle, yet calculated chaos. As Chris Jennings notes of Auerbach’s careful practice, “Rather than acting as a desolate precursor to form and beauty, chaos has breached the arid canvas and introduced an almost organic feeling of motion and dynamism.” (“Strange and Quiet Noise”, Chaos: Tauba Auerbach, exh. cat., Deitch Projects, New York, 2009, p. 56)

    Elegant and intriguing, Untitled (Fold) emanates a distinctive luminosity, capturing the gentle rays of warm light across what appears at first to be a richly textured and gently colored crumple of cloth. However, drawing in close, the viewer realizes that these voluminous folds are a farce and don’t so much vanish as transmogrify into a flattened facsimile of their former selves, immediately revealing the even surface of the painted canvas. As such, the work acts as both a reflective and reflexive document, at once of and about its own creation and existence. “…you could make as good an argument for my ‘Fold’ paintings being representational, realistic or even trompe l’oeil, as you could for them being abstract. There is a direct, 1:1 relationship between every point on the surface of the image and that same exact point on the surface in the image. Because I spray the creased canvas directionally, the pigment acts like raking light and freezes a likeness of the contoured material onto itself. It develops like a photo as I paint. The record of that topological moment is carried forward after the material is stretched flat. Each point on the surface contains a record of itself in that previous state.” (T. Auerbach in conversation with C. Bedford, “Dear Painter…”, Frieze, March, 2012, p. 104)

Ο45

Untitled (Fold)

2010
acrylic on canvas
60 x 45 in. (152.4 x 114.3 cm)
Signed and dated "TAUBA AUERBACH 2010" along the overlap.

Estimate
$1,500,000 - 2,000,000 

Sold for $1,445,000

Contact Specialist
Kate Bryan
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+ 1 212 940 1267

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 8 November 2015 7pm