Avery Singer - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Thursday, October 4, 2018 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery, Berlin
    Private Collection, USA
    Inigo Philbrick, London
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Bursting with satirical humour, Avery Singer’s practice is a synthesis of tongue-in-cheek references and complex reflections on the history of visual culture. Portraying fictional, stylised figures nearly entirely in black and white tones, the artist’s works hover between figuration and abstraction. With a rich vocabulary of art historical quotations, Singer’s paintings challenge artistic stereotypes and traditional means of perception. The present work, Ihole, with tessellating planes of shadow and light is exemplary of the artist's technically refined and dimensional contemporary practice.

    Inspired by the medium of film, with its fleeting temporality yet lasting ability to freeze a moment, Singer experimented with digital imagery before settling on her present practice. The artist creates her compositions with sketches from the 3D modelling program SketchUp, before projecting the image onto canvas and rendering the analogue forms in masking tape and airbrushing the surface. Building up layers of paint, the artist works on each large-scale canvas for a number of weeks, creating a final composition instilled with volume, form and her own unusual juxtapositions of artistic associations.

    Embedded with gentle sarcasm, Singer’s work is supported by delicate paradoxes; the artist’s canvases are stylised assemblies of past, present and future. Working digital technology into her practice, through medium and literal references, the artist marries multiple time frames. In Ihole, the protagonist is presented in the most traditional reclining pose drawn from odalisques of the past. She gazes back at the viewer however, clutching a totem of contemporary society, the smartphone.

    Evoking the bold, visual principles of constructivism and cubism, whilst employing the monochrome palette of historical film footage and photographs, Singer's work is firmly grounded in the present and future of digital imagery.

1

iHole

acrylic on panel
112 x 183 cm (44 1/8 x 72 in.)
Painted in 2011.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for £243,000

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4061 hhighley@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 5 October 2018