Sadie Benning - Unbound: Online Auction New York Monday, October 21, 2019 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Sadie Benning has always resisted clear categories or labels. Over the last thirty years, the artist has worked in video, photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage and sound, often referencing multiple mediums at once or subverting one process to inform another.

    Made by cutting up wood based panels, coating them in layers of resin and piecing them back together, Benning’s wall based works are colorful compositions that simultaneously recall the history of painting and challenge it. The artist’s bright, abstract forms sit snugly within the painting’s edges, reminiscent of how Ellsworth Kelly might fit his circles into squares, but by sculpting physical shapes rather than painting them, Benning’s process pushes the boundaries of what a painting can be and how to make one.

    The presented lot, Untitled Telephone Drawing made in 2016, is one of a number of works that find the artist leaning toward shape and form rather than more recognizable iconography or images. At an artist talk for the 2016 exhibition Shared Eye at the Renaissance Society, the artist said, “I didn’t want to dictate something so direct, I didn’t want to tell someone what they have to think...Perception is something that is constructed...We all have our own histories that we bring to what we see.”

2

"Untitled" telephone drawing

signed and dated "Sadie Benning 2016" on the reverse
Aqua-Resin, casein and acrylic gouache on wood
55 x 36 1/4 in. (139.7 x 92.1 cm.)
Executed in 2016.

Estimate
$15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for $18,750

Contact Specialist

Katherine Lukacher
Head of Online Sales, 20th Century & Contemporary Art
+1 212 940 1215
klukacher@phillips.com

Unbound: Online Auction

Online 21 - 30 October 2019 | Bidding closes October 30th, 2pm EDT