Torkwase Dyson - New Now New York Wednesday, September 28, 2022 | Phillips

Create your first list.

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

  • Painted in 2017, Water Table 02 is part of the artist’s series of the same name, showcasing abstract interactions between stone and water elements. Inspired by the story of Henry “Box” Brown, an enslaved African American who was freed by shipping himself from Virginia to Philadelphia in a crate, the Water Table series gracefully explores the themes of intergenerational trauma, silence and struggle.i Inspired by the poetics of displacement and water as a mode of spiritual connection, Dyson’s work has been exhibited across the United States, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
    "So what does it mean to understand that kind of cycle of condition of lived experiences? And what does it mean to understand how water works in relationship to culture, in relationship to memory. In my work I have to understand ecology and geography as an ongoing condition of Blackness. So when I go to the ocean now, and go out to these points, I understand the distance that I have from my ancestors, but I also understand that their bodies, their energies, their essences, are absolutely wrapped in those regions." —Torkwase Dyson

    i Torkwase Dyson: Dear Henry, exh. cat., Davidson Contemporary, New York, 2018, n.p. 

    • Provenance

      Davidson Contemporary, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, The Last Place They Thought Of, April 27–August 12, 2018, pp. 63, 103 (installation view illustrated, p. 63)

44

Water Table 02

signed and dated "Torkwase Dyson 2017" on the reverse
acrylic on canvas
37 5/8 x 37 5/8 in. (95.6 x 95.6 cm)
Painted in 2017.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$8,000 - 12,000 

Sold for $20,160

Contact Specialist

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

New Now

New York Auction 28 September 2022