Provenance
Sutton Lane, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Private collection NY
Exhibited
Paris, Sutton Lane, What Where: Tauba Auerbach, Alex Hubbard, Nathan Hylden & Zak Prekop, 6 February - 3 March 2010
Catalogue Essay
'For the last two years I have tried to conjure four-dimensional space. The Fold paintings are my effort to construct a portal through which to summon - or at least imagine - this inaccessible hyper-spatial reality.' Tauba Auerbach

In Tauba Auerbach’s work, the artist interweaves binary oppositions typically viewed as incompatible – such as permeability and solidity, order and disorder - into unified surfaces. The series of Fold paintings demonstrate the artist’s attempt to challenge the conventional ways visual and perceptual information is portrayed. Elegant and methodical in its rendering, Untitled (Fold) XV, 2010, breaks down traditional distinctions between image, dimensionality and content, forcing the viewer to confront the limitations between two supposedly discrete states: flatness and three-dimensionality.

A modern day ‘trompe l’oeil’, the present lot leads the viewer to believe they are observing a three-dimensional relief, as opposed to a two-dimensional work. By firstly manipulating the large piece of blank canvas into various configurations through rolling and folding, Auerbach was able to produce the optical illusion by laying the canvas out flat, and then painting its surface with an industrial spray gun aimed at three different angles. The resultant pleats that span horizontally, vertically and diagonally across the canvas, fold and unfold, gather and flatten, crease and straighten with captivating rhythm. The canvas itself seems to pull together, as if releasing itself altogether from its supporting wooden frame. Looking at the work from a distance, our tactile sense is stimulated, as we expect the surface of creased paper. Upon approach however, the viewer realises that the canvas is actually taut: rigidly tightened over the stretcher.

Infusing an object which is seemingly flat with volume and motion is where the ingenuity behind Auerbach’s practice lies. Occupying an impossible space between the second and third dimension, the work is in a state which the artist herself defines as the 2.5th dimension. Certainly, Untitled (Fold) XV, raises crucial questions about the nature of depicting a three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface, and in particular, the relationship between abstraction and representation. It is exemplary of the artist’s innovative interconnection of a constructive approach and fundamental themes relating to the history of art, which enables the artist to present the viewer with an alternation between flatness and dimension, treating the canvas as though it were a topographical study on the surface of the canvas.

The illusory nature of the painting is reminiscent of a similar effect achieved in Rupert Stingel’s Untitled, 1993, an artist who, in much the same way as Auerbach, questions the conventions of art and innovates his viewers’ experience of it, whether it be on vertical, horizontal or abstract planes. Indeed, oscillating between a flat surface and a three-dimensional object, Auerbach’s composition is an exquisite and invigorating response to her continuing fascination with an attempt to fuse contrary states of order and chaos into a cohesive whole.

3

Tauba Auerbach

Untitled (Fold) XV

2010
acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 121.9 cm. (60 x 48 in.)
Signed, titled and dated 'UNTITLED (FOLD) XV TAUBA AUERBACH 2010' on the overlap.

Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 ‡

Sold for £386,500

Contact Specialist
Peter Sumner
Head of Contemporary Art Department
psumner@phillips.com
+44 207 318 4063

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London 27 June 2013 7pm

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Rob Pruitt
Chinese Buffet
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
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Kelley Walker
Untitled
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3
Tauba Auerbach
Untitled (Fold) XV
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4
Ugo Rondinone
No. 209 DREISSIGSTERJUNIZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL
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Ugo Rondinone
If There were Anywhere but Desert. Friday
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6
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #426
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7
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled (Bolego)
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Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #36
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9
Glenn Brown
Oscillate Wildly (after ‘Autumnal Cannibalism’ 1936 by Salvador Dalí)
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Andy Warhol
Pontiac
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11
Anish Kapoor
Untitled
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12
Andy Warhol
Diamond Dust Shoes
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Andy Warhol
Skull
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Three Pontificators
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Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Three-Tiered Perspective)
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Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled
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17
Anish Kapoor
Turning the World Upside Down II
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Antony Gormley
SICK
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This lot is no longer available.
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Andy Warhol
Electric Chairs
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George Condo
Smiling Smoker
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Marcel Broodthaers
Abbildung
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23
Oscar Murillo
Untitled
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Sterling Ruby
Alabaster SR10-7
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Jacob Kassay
Untitled
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Rashid Johnson
Cosmic Slop
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Marc Quinn
Separation of Body and Soul (Ultramarine)
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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Provenance

Exhibited

Catalogue Essay

3

Tauba Auerbach

Untitled (Fold) XV

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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