Harold Ancart - New Now New York Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | Phillips

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  • Executed in 2014, Untitled presents rich pigments cutting through a cavernous black space, drawing the viewer into an endless expanse. In harmony with Harold Ancart’s other ethereal seascapes, a vibrant green ocean is caressed by strokes of cyan, red, and yellow that seem to suggest the ebb and flow of tides. Above the sea, complementary orange and pale blue cloud-like shapes define an environment that has been stripped down to its rudimentary forms; the sharp contrast in color and recognizable forms dramatizes a once familiar scene into one that transcends lived experience.

     

     

    Originally from Brussels and currently living in New York, Ancart utilizes oilstick to invent otherworldly landscapes and abstract versions of reality. Employing bold and saturated colors, negative space, and enigmatic minimalist forms, Ancart uses his distinctive visual idiom to investigate human imagination and its insatiable desires. Central to the artist’s landscape paintings are the textured bursts of color that coalesce amidst an infinite night sky. In his deployment of Fauvist, Abstract Expressionist and Surrealist devices, Ancart’s experimentation with painterly space and color create organic abstractions reminiscent of dreams or science fiction movies. Blurring the line between figuration and abstraction, Ancart’s practice is acclaimed for its evocation of what lies just beyond reality—what is to be imagined or yearned for. Indeed, the artist desires for people to “embrace things less with the brain and more with the chest.”i When confronted with Ancart’s kaleidoscopic, abstracted spaces, the viewer’s impulse is to fill in the visual gaps, demonstrating our inclination to forge connectivity to the places we encounter.

     

    i Harold Ancart, quoted in Dodie Kazanjian, “Up Close and Personal. (Njideka Akynyili Crosby, Shara Hughes and Harold Ancart),” Vogue, vol. 206, no. 9, September 1, 2016, p. 736

    • Provenance

      C L E A R I N G, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

Property From an Important Private Collection

29

Untitled

oilstick and pencil on paper laid on board, in artist's frame
52 3/4 x 71 in. (134 x 180.3 cm)
Executed in 2014.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$70,000 - 100,000 

Sold for $100,800

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen

Head of Sale, New Now

212 940 1207

asemjen@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 9 March 2022