Thomas Houseago - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 12, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Private Collection

  • Catalogue Essay

    My main concern is to capture a kind of reality so that the pieces take on an energy or life. The end result of their appearance is very much secondary. I think you could say that all faces in sculptures are to some extent masks, so I’m not unusual in that. But I do love to look at how faces are made in sculptures historically and the stylizations that are employed in masks from different cultures. When they are successful, they reflect a truth about the face and its expressions. Often the most stylized
    or seemingly fantastical representations of the face feel the most realistic. Darth Vader and Spider Man are unbelievably powerful images of a human face, as was David Bowie in the Ziggy Stardust mask. I create faces or heads or masks usually with the idea that they will be part of a bigger sculpture, but sometimes they are so complete or tell such a clear story that they become complete works, and I present them like that.

    THOMAS HOUSEAGO

    (Thomas Houseago in conversation with Rachel Rosenfeld Lafo, reproduced in “Figuratively Speaking: A Conversation with Thomas Houseago,” Sculpture, November 2010)

4

Untitled

2008
Plaster, wood, hemp, graphite and oilbar.
74 x 49 x 45 in. (188 x 124.5 x 114.3 cm.)

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $98,500

Contemporary Art Part I

12 May 2011
New York