In the present lot, Parchment Knot 6, American artist Sherrie Levine has utilised plywood as her medium of choice. This commonly found material has been altered by Levine; the knot, defined as a ‘particular type of imperfection in a piece of wood’ has been removed. Levine fills this vacancy with a metallic acrylic paint, the knots appear to the viewer as stunning silver drops, sprinkled across the wooden surface. By highlighting what were once considered unwanted blemishes, Levine explains that she 'wanted to make pictures that contradicted themselves. I wanted to put one picture on top of another so that there were times when both pictures disappear and other times when they were both manifest. That vibration is basically what the work was about for me—that space in the middle where there is no picture, rather an emptiness, an oblivion.' (Sherrie Levine in K. McShine, The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1999, p. 140)
Her first series of Knot paintings began in 1984 and have continued to mature and evolve. Levine’s Parchment Knot works are always framed in a wooden and Plexiglas box. By housing her Parchment Knots in this protective casing Levine questions the divide between high and low material, plywood typically being the material that protects other, more precious material and not vice versa. In Parchment Knot 6, Levine is thoughtfully and meticulously exploring the nature of the artist’s ready-made object, suggesting ‘that there is aesthetic pleasure to be mined in even the most ostensibly banal objects.’ (Johanna Burton, exh. Cat., 2011, Whitney Museum of American Art, Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, exhibition brochure)