Mark Handforth - Under the Influence New York Friday, September 23, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York
    Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Under The Influence, March 9, 2009, Lot 24
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    New York, White Columns, White Columns Benefit, May 6 - 17, 2008

  • Catalogue Essay

    I experience the world kind of very tangibly and tactilely and I think that’s how I want people to experience the sculptures. –Mark Handforth

    (Mark Handforth speaks to MCA Chicago, July 7, 2011)

    Mark Handforth’s sculptures create new meaning to the texts and objects that inhabit our everyday lives, and as a result force the viewer to reconsider the ways in which the objects can be engaged. Using materials found most often in an urban landscape, Handforth has been known to include objects such as benches, street signs, lampposts, fluorescent lights and even Vespa motorbikes in his elaborate projects. These objects are then altered by bending, twisting or manipulating them in some way and placing them out of their original context in a gallery or public space. The resulting effect is a surprisingly surreal and unique representation of typical objects often times over looked in an every day setting.

    Exemplifying his craft, Handforth’s Bearded Snake, 2005 utilizes a bar of steel which has been transformed into a sinuous strip of unrecognizable material, spray painted and adorned with a lit candle at its head. Handforth has in this case taken a reinforcing steel bar and created a multicolored, slithering snake-like creature, breaking the existing notion of the original material and inventing an interesting new way of seeing it

153

Bearded Snake

2005
Painted steel and colored wax candle.
19 1/2 x 12 x 57 in. (49.5 x 30.5 x 144.8 cm)

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Under the Influence

23 September 2011
New York