Tauba Auerbach - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, November 15, 2012 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
    Private collection, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    I try to do something perfect and ordered, I always make a mistake and that breaks the rigidity of the order, and [I]think that’s the best part.
    TAUBA AUERBACH

    (Tauba Auerbach, in Aaron Rose, “Tauba Auerbach”, ANP Quarterly, August 2008, p.23).


    Engaging with a variety of mediums, San Francisco born, New York-based artist, Tauba Auerbach interweaves dynamics of design, performance, and painting into a conceptually complex and visually exhilarating practice. Untitled (Fold), 2010, is an optical puzzle. The creases that span diagonally across the length of the canvas fold and unfold, crease and .atten, crumple and straighten with captivating rhythm. The canvas seems to pucker and extend off of its stretcher in the central folds, as if tormented and trampled beyond repair. However, upon close examination, the canvas is taught; rigid against the stretcher, without a single inch extending towards the viewer. The canvas is a modern day trompe l’oeil, tricking its audience into believing it is a three dimensional sculpture, rather than a two dimensional work. The interrupting patterns push the boundaries of surface, appearing textured and dynamic, when actually .ush and even. Something seemingly .at is infused with volume and motion.

    Auerbach plays with our uncertainty. She toys with our doubt and distrust of the object before us. Untitled (Fold), 2010, occupies an impossible space between two dimensions and three. The spray painted canvas resembles a wrinkled sheet of paper or fabric, but in reality surprises like a pop-up book being opened and closed. In Untitled (Fold), 2010, a playful push and pull co-exists between .atness and dimensions, as if a topographical study on the direct relationship between every point on the surface of the image. “Because I spray the creased canvas directionally, the pigment acts like a raking light and freezes a likeness of the contoured materials onto itself. It develops like a photo as I paint. The record of that topological moment is carried forward after the material is stretched .at. Each point on the surface contains a record of itself in that previous state.” (Tauba Auerbach, in Christopher Bedford “Dear Painter...”, Frieze, March 2012).

1

Untitled (Fold)

2010
acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 in. (76.2 x 61 cm)
Signed and dated “Tauba Auerbach 2010”on reverse.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $290,500

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

15 November 2012
New York