Barnaby Furnas - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London

  • Exhibited


    London, Stuart Shave Modern Art, Barnaby Furnas, October 14 – November 21, 2004; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, Barnaby Furnas, April 16 - June 19, 2005; London, Royal Academy of Arts, USA Today, October 6 – November 4, 2006

  • Literature


    BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, ed., Barnaby Furnas, New York, 2005, pp. 3, 7-8, 33 (illustrated); Royal Academy of Arts, ed., USA Today, London, 2006, p. 137 (illustrated); P. Mitchell, “USA Today: A political outlook emerging amongst artists,” World Socialist Web Site wsws.org (online content), November 13, 2006; M. Henry, Abstract America, London, 2008, p. 383 (illustrated); S. Momin, Barnaby Furnas, New York, 2009, p. 55 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    At this alchemical point, America’s past inevitably appears to zoom forward, with hallucinatory clarity, into its present (and vice versa) and something happens akin to what William S. Borroughs famously wrote in reference to the phantasmal titual subject of The Naked Lunch (1959): “A frozen moment when everyone sees what’s on the end of every fork. And it isn’t too pretty.” So, no, Furnas’s world isn’t too pretty. But what counts is that it has the urgent, convinced and convincing feel of facts revealed. His art reminds us, in fact, that in a culture of increasingly double-dealing surfaces, painting might be the truest thing we have, and that its remit as a raiser of consciousness may still be valid.
    M. Herbert, “Barnaby Furnas: Blood in the Water,” Barnaby Furnas, New York, 2005, pp. 10 -11
    Barnaby Furnas’s incendiary works generously employ liquid media, playfully manipulating its viscosity to create his violent, slashing painted images. Preoccupied with apocalyptic, destructive events that have shaped our contemporary culture and attitudes, the artist’s work tends toward the political while maintaining a gorgeous abstraction that speaks to the histories of both Expressionism and figurative History Painting. Detached yet subjective, the artist positions his viewers within an imperative moment: his figures depicted represent a dichotomy of salvation and Antichrist, existing in a time arch that bends the past into the now. Meanwhile, his aggressive and bold trademark gesture references immediacy and directly includes the viewer.
    Referencing the spatial relations of an early video game, the present lot is exemplary of Furnas’ evocative and explosive paintings. Two elongated figures in pinstriped suits confront one another within a landscape sprayed with fireworks and blood. Flattened and compressed, the image sardonically depicts Independence Day as a violent and combative event. The work comments on the sinister nature of corporate capitalism while paying teasing homage to the endurance of American patriotism.

115

Duel (July 4th)

2004

Oil on canvas.

128 1/4 x 76 in. (325.8 x 193 cm).
Signed, titled and dated “Barnaby Furnas Duel (July 4th) 04” on the reverse.

Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York