Kristy M Chan - New Now New York Wednesday, September 28, 2022 | Phillips

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  • "It’s like I’m my own flâneur, observing my own experiences with people, then layering these different memories on a canvas, or 'stolen realities' as I like to call them"
    —Kristy Chan
    Bursting with vivid kaleidoscopic strokes of teal, cobalt and amber, Kristy Chan's The Bathtub I’ve Always Wanted No. 15 from 2019 is a sumptuous example of the artist’s exploration of metaphysical identity. The work fluently converges picture planes that amplify a surrealist setting and captures the artist’s signature technique of depicting “stolen realities:” moments that have passed and become lost in time. Since receiving her BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2019 and her MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in 2020, Chan has launched herself into the global art scene with a well-received solo show at The Artist Room in London last year.


    Raised between Hong Kong and London, Chan’s body of work explores the conflicted—and sometimes conflated— ideas of migration, physical and cultural belonging. While studying Old Masters painting at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, Chan quickly began to incorporate elements of her everyday life such as friends and recurrent locations into her work, much like Johannes Vermeer’s window. Eventually transitioning to more abstract representations, Chan oscillates between abstraction and figuration within the dense layers of The Bathtub I’ve Always Wanted No. 15. Chan transforms the bathtub vessel into a vehicle for remembering; art history, sensory memory and confusion all meet in one swirling gesture.

    "[The series] started when I moved flats in London and was left with a standing shower instead of a bathtub. I felt devastated, so I made work about different scenarios of being in a bathtub, looking at one, what I felt when I see a bathtub in a store that sells them." —Kristy Chan

    Pierre Auguste Renoir, The Great Bathers, 1884-1887. Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., Collection, 1963.
    • Provenance

      The Artist Room, London
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      London, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Slade Degree Shows 2019, May 2019

5

The Bathtub I've Always Wanted No. 15

signed, titled and dated "Kristy M Chan Bathtub I've Always Wanted No. 15 2019" on the reverse
oil and spray paint on canvas
98 5/8 x 82 3/4 in. (250.5 x 210.2 cm)
Executed in 2019.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for $41,580

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Head of Sale, New Now
212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 28 September 2022