PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTION
27
Ken Price
Oh Gee
估價
$150,000–200,000
成交價
$314,500
Fired and painted clay.
19 1/4 x 16 1/4 x 13 1/2 in (48.9 x 41.3 x 34.3 cm)
完整圖錄內容
There are contradictions aplenty in Ken Price’s sculpture; it resolutely resists categorization. Price’s forms wriggle their way out of definition. There are apparent contradictions of materials, function, emotional response and scale. This historically ‘underappreciated’ artist is the subject of a high-profile retrospective at LACMA, currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, which travels this June to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The list of contradictions continues; this might imply there is something unresolved in the work but not so. The line is there, the work of decades strung along it, pushing in different directions but with an underlying
personal exploration and morphology that reveals itself time and time again.
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There is unity too, not least in the harmonious integration of body and surface. Robert Irwin’s much repeated quote sums it up well: “You had the feeling that if you cut that thing in half, it would be that color all the way through. The color was so right, so tuned to the shape that to me, there was real brilliance in it, nobody else has that.” Those who search for a definitive meaning in Price’s work may be looking in the wrong place. He says “…meaning is ambiguous. It’s mysterious, uncertain and open to personal interpretation. I make concrete objects that stay the same, pretty much for the whole time they exist, and you can go away, and you can come back, and maybe you’ve changed, but the object will still be the same.” In a shorter timeframe of experience there is often a push-pull of emotions that has been famously described by Edward Lebow as “compellingly repulsive.” “Oh gee” sits at a fork in the road, a point where the artist is about to finally step away from the vessel as a vehicle for his creative process. By the time the final coats of paint were revealed on “Oh gee,” the aperture on other works had closed, and his work moved on again.
personal exploration and morphology that reveals itself time and time again.
<br><br>
There is unity too, not least in the harmonious integration of body and surface. Robert Irwin’s much repeated quote sums it up well: “You had the feeling that if you cut that thing in half, it would be that color all the way through. The color was so right, so tuned to the shape that to me, there was real brilliance in it, nobody else has that.” Those who search for a definitive meaning in Price’s work may be looking in the wrong place. He says “…meaning is ambiguous. It’s mysterious, uncertain and open to personal interpretation. I make concrete objects that stay the same, pretty much for the whole time they exist, and you can go away, and you can come back, and maybe you’ve changed, but the object will still be the same.” In a shorter timeframe of experience there is often a push-pull of emotions that has been famously described by Edward Lebow as “compellingly repulsive.” “Oh gee” sits at a fork in the road, a point where the artist is about to finally step away from the vessel as a vehicle for his creative process. By the time the final coats of paint were revealed on “Oh gee,” the aperture on other works had closed, and his work moved on again.