The MAM Collection

Collect the finest art of our times for the future.

[mamcollection]

Saša Tkačenko

I'm like you, 2018 Aluminium, automotive paint 125 x 200 x 5 cm Edition of 3 EUR 10,000.00

I am a Berliner, he told me in Russian. I feel good here. But now I go back to Mongolia every summer. I am like you. If I go there I feel like a tourist and if I stay here I feel like a tourist. You know how I get out of this? I fly Berlin-Ulan Bator on Air France. They have the best Champagne.

Sunset, 2018 Inkjet print, laser engraved glass 100 x 70 x 2 cm each (triptych) EUR 3,500.00

Liste Art Fair Basel 2021

Both in the case of Sunset and I’m like you, landscape served as a basis around which the textual narrative was built. Both works come to life as an error by manual repetition and aim to increase the artificiality in creating an image out of a motive originating in nature. An aluminium panel treated with colours normally used on cars, polished to a high gloss, is transformed into a blue sky horizon. The horizon conceals a quotation from Future of Nostalgia (2005), a book by Svetlana Bojm. Champagne bottles placed on the floor of the gallery further emphasise the situation in which the problems of alienation in immigration are solved, if only for a moment.

The artificial sunset (Sunset) was created by scanning the negative of a failed photograph and multiplying it. On the glass surface of the frames, the words νόστος (nóstos) and ἄλγος (álgos) are engraved, which are Greek words for returning home and pain, in turn forming the word nostalgia.

[mamcollection]

Maggie’s Centre, Dundee, Scotland

Located on the grounds of National Health Service hospitals across Great Britain, Maggie’s Centres are support facilities for cancer patients, designed by renowned architects and operated according to principles devised by its founder, its cofounder, the landscape architect Maggie Keswick Jencks. Gehry completed the first new-build Maggie’s Centre in 2003.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/best-of-frank-gehry-slideshow

[mamcollection]

Between Rabbit and Fox 2017 Acrylic and graphite on canvas 70" x 50.125"

[mamcollection]

Artist Gina Beavers Satirizes Our Insatiable Appetite for Personal Beauty in Her New Show at Marianne Boesky

Makeup as Muse: Gina Beavers

November 28, 2020

Despite my art history background and general love of art, I am less than eloquent when writing about it.  Nevertheless I will continue soldiering forward with the Museum's Makeup as Muse series, the latest installment of which focuses on the work of Gina Beavers in honor of her recent show at Marianne Boesky Gallery. Beavers' practice encompasses a variety of themes, but it's her paintings of makeup tutorials that I'll be exploring.  Since I'm both tired and lazy this will be more of a summary of her work rather than offering any fresh insight and I'll be quoting the artist extensively along with some writers who have covered her art, so most of this will not be my own words.

Born in Athens and raised in Europe, Beavers is fascinated by the excess and consumerism of both American culture and social media. "I don't know how to talk about this existence without talking about consumption, and so I think that's the element in consuming other people's images. That's where that's embedded. We have to start with consumption if we're going to talk about who we are. That's the bedrock—especially as an American," she says.  The purchase of a smart phone in 2010 is when Beavers' work began focusing on social media.  "[Pre-smart phone] I would see things in the world and paint them! Post-smartphone my attention and observation seemed to go into my phone, into looking at and participating in social media apps, and all of the things that would arise there...Historically, painters have drawn inspiration from their world, for me it's just that a lot of my world is virtual [now]."

But why makeup, and specifically, makeup tutorials?  There seem to be two main themes running through the artist's focus on these online instructions, the first being the relationship between painting and makeup.  Beavers explains:  "When I started with these paintings I was really thinking that this painting is looking at you while it is painting itself. It’s drawing and painting: it has pencils, it has brushes, and it’s trying to make itself appealing to the viewer. It’s about that parallel between a painting and what you expect from it as well as desire and attraction. It’s also interesting because the terms that makeup artists use on social media are painting terms. The way they talk about brushes or pigments sounds like painters talking shop."  Makeup application as traditional painting is a theme that goes back centuries, but Beavers's work represents a fresh take on it.  As Ellen Blumenstein wrote in an essay for Wall Street International: "Elements such as brushes, lipsticks or fingers, which are intended to reassure the viewers of the videos of the imitability of the make-up procedures, here allude to the active role of the painting – which does not just stare or make eyes at the viewer, but rather seems to paint itself with the accessories depicted – literally building a bridge extending out from the image...Beavers divests [the image] of its natural quality and uses painting as an analytical tool. The viewer is no longer looking at photographic tableaus composed of freeze-frames taken from make-up tutorials, but rather paintings about make-up tutorials, which present the aesthetic and formal parameters of this particular class of images, which exist exclusively on the net."  The conflation of makeup and painting can also be perceived as a rumination on authorship and original sources.  Beavers is remaking tutorials, but the tutorials themselves originated with individual bloggers and YouTubers.  And given the viral, democratic nature of the Internet, it's nearly impossible to tell who did a particular tutorial first and whether tutorials covering the same material - say, lip art depicting Van Gogh's "Starry Night"  - are direct copies of one artist's work or merely the phenomenon of many people having the same idea and sharing it online.  Sometimes the online audience cannot distinguish between authentic content and advertising; Beavers's "Burger Eye" (2015), for example, is actually not recreated from a tutorial at all but an Instagram ad for Burger King (and the makeup artist who was hired to create it remains, as far as I know, uncredited).

Another theme is fashioning one's self through makeup, and how that self is projected online in multiple ways.  Beavers explains: "I am interested in the ways existing online is performative, and the tremendous lengths people go to in constructing their online selves. Meme-makers, face-painters, people who make their hair into sculptures, are really a frontier of a new creative world...It’s interesting, as make-up has gotten bigger and bigger, I’ve realized what an important role it plays in helping people construct a self, particularly in trans and drag communities. I don’t normally wear a lot of make-up myself, but I like the idea of the process of applying make-up standing in for the process of self-determination, the idea of ‘making yourself’."

As for the artist's process, it's a laborious one. Beavers regularly combs Instagram, YouTube and other online sources and saves thousands of images on her phone. She then narrows down to a few based on both composition and the story they're trying to tell. "I'm arrested by images that have interesting formal qualities, color, composition but also a compelling narrative. I really like when an image is saying something that leaves me unsure of how it will translate to painting, like whether the meaning will change in the context of the history of painting," she says.  "I always felt drawn to photos that had an interesting composition, whether for its color or depth or organization. But in order for me to want to paint it, it also had to have interesting content, like the image was communicating some reality beyond its composition that I related to in my life or that I thought spoke in some interesting way about culture."  The act of painting for Beavers is physically demanding as well: she needs to start several series at the same time and go back and forth between paintings to allow the layers to dry.  They have to lay flat to dry so she often ends up painting on the floor, and her recent switch to an even heavier acrylic caused a bout of carpal tunnel syndrome.

But it's precisely the thick quality of the paint that return some of the tactile nature of makeup application.  This is not accidental; Beavers intentionally uses this technique as way to remind us of makeup's various textures and to ensure her paintings resemble paintings rather than a photorealistic recreation of the digital screen. "The depth of certain elements in the background of images has taught me a lot about seeing. I think I have learned that I enjoy setting up problems to solve, that it isn't enough for me to simply render a photo realistically, that I have to build up the acrylic deeply in order to interfere with the rendering of something too realistically," she explains.  Sharon Mizota, writing for the LA Times, says it best:  "Skin, lashes and lips are textured with rough, caked-on brushstrokes that mimic and exaggerate wrinkles and gloppy mascara. This treatment gives the subjects back some of the clunky physicality that the camera and the digital screen strip away. Beavers’ paintings, in some measure, undo the gloss of the photographic image."

Beavers also uses foam to further build up certain sections so that they bulge out towards the viewer, representing the desire to connect to others online.  "Much of what people do online is to try to create connection, to reach out and meet people or talk to people. That is what the surfaces of my painting do in a really literal way, they are reaching off the linen into the viewer’s space," she says.  This sculptural quality also points to the reality of the online world - it's not quite "real life" but it's not imaginary either, occupying a space in between.  Beavers expands on her painting style representing the online space: "It’s interesting because flatness often comes up with screens, and I think historically the screen might have been read like that, reflecting a more passive relationship. That has changed with the advent of engagement and social media. What’s behind our screen is a whole living, breathing world, one that gives as much as it takes. I mean it is certainly as 'real' as anything else. I see the dimension as a way to reflect that world and the ways that world is reaching out to make a connection. Another aspect is that once these works are finished, they end up circulating back in the same online world and now have this heightened dimensionality – they cast their own shadow. They’re not a real person, or burger, or whatever, but they’re not a photo of it either, they’re something in between."

Let's dig a little more into what all this means in terms of makeup, the beauty industry and social media.  Beavers' work can be viewed as a simultaneous critique and celebration of all three.  Sharon Mizota again: "[The tutorial paintings] also pointedly mimic the act of putting on makeup, reminding us that it is something like sedimentation, built up layer by layer. There is no effortless glamour here, only sticky accretion.  That quality itself feels like an indictment — of the beauty industry, of restrictive gender roles. But an element of playfulness and admiration lives in Beavers’ work.  They speak of makeup as a site of creativity and self-transformation, and Instagram and other social media sites as democratizing forces in the spread of culture. To be sure, social media may be the spur for increasingly outré acts, which are often a form of bragging, but why shouldn’t a hamburger eye be as popular as a smoky eye? In translating these photographs into something more physical, Beavers asks us to consider these questions and exposes the duality of the makeup industry: The same business that strives to make us insecure also enables us to reinvent ourselves, not just in the image of the beautiful as it’s already defined, but in images of our own devising."

This ambiguity is particularly apparent in Beavers's 2015 exhibition, entitled Ambitchous, which incorporated beauty Instagrammers and YouTubers' makeup renditions of Disney villains alongside "good" characters.  Blumenstein explains: "So it isn’t protagonists with positive connotations which are favoured by the artist, but unmistakably ambivalent characters who could undoubtedly lay claim to the neologism ambitchous, which is the name given to the exhibition. Like the original image material, this portmanteau of ‘ambitious’ and ‘bitchy’ is taken from social media and its creative vernacular, and is used, depending on the context, either in a derogatory fashion – for example for women who will do absolutely anything to get what they want – or positively re-interpreted as an expression of female self-affirmation.  Beavers also applies this playful and strategic complication of seemingly unambiguous contexts of meaning to the statements contained in her paintings. It remains utterly impossible to determine whether they are critically exaggerating the conformist and consumerist beauty ideals of neo-capitalism, or ascribing emancipatory potential to the conscious and confident use of make-up."

More recently, Beavers has been using her own face as a canvas and making her own photos of them her source material, furthering her exploration of the self. "Staring at yourself or your lips for hours is pretty jarring. But I like it, because it creates this whole other level of self,” she says.

This shift also points to another dichotomy in Beavers's work: in recreating famous works of art on her face, she is both critiquing art history's traditional canon and appreciating it, referring to them as a sort of fan art.  "I think a lot of the works that I have made that reference art history—like whether it's Van Gogh or whoever it is—have a duality where I really respect the artist and I'm influenced by them, and at the same time I'm making it my own and poking a little fun. And so, a lot of these pieces originated with the idea of fan art. You'll find all sorts of Starry Night images online that people have painted or sculpted or painted on their body. It comes out of that. And I just started to reach a point where I was searching things like 'Franz Kline body art,' and I wasn’t finding that, so I had to make my own. Then it started to get a little bit geekier. I have a piece in the show where I am painting a Lee Bontecou on my cheek, that's a kind of art world geeky thing—you have to really love art to get it."

Ultimately, Beavers perceives the intersection of makeup and social media as a force for good.  While the specter of misinformation is always lurking, YouTube tutorials and the like allow anyone with internet access to learn how to do a smoky eye or a flawlessly lined lip.  "I think for a lot of people social media is kind of like the weather. We don't have a lot of control of it, it just is. It gives and it takes away. There's no doubt that it has connected people in ways that are great and productive, allowing people to find communities and organize activism, it can also be a huge distraction...I approach looking at images there pretty distantly, more as a neutral documentarian, and I come down on the side of seeing social media as an incredibly useful, democratic tool in a lot of ways," she concludes.

On the other side of social media, Beavers is interested on how content creators help disseminate the idea of makeup as representing something larger and more meaningful than traditional notions of beauty. "I was super fascinated with makeup and all of the kinds of costume makeup and things you can find online that go away from a traditional beauty makeup and go towards something really wild and cool...I also had certain paintings in [a 2016] show that were much more about costume makeup, that were going away from beauty. That’s the thing that gives me hope. When I go through makeup hashtags on Instagram, there will be ten or twenty beauty eye makeup images and then one that’s painted with horror makeup. There are women out there doing completely weird things, right next to alluring ones." In the pandemic age, as people's relationships with makeup are changing, "weird" makeup is actually becoming less strange. Beavers' emphasis on experimental makeup is more timely than ever.  I also think she's documenting the gradual way makeup is breaking free of the gender binary.  She says: "I mean with makeup, and the whole conversation around femininity and makeup—I think for a long time when I was making makeup images, there were people that just thought, 'Oh, that's not for me,' because it's about makeup, it's feminine. But it’s interesting, the culture is shifting. I just saw the other day that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did a whole Instagram live where she was putting on her makeup and talking about how empowering makeup is for trans communities...some people see make-up as restrictive or frivolous, but drag performers show how it can be liberating and life-saving."  Another point to consider in terms of gender is the close-up aspect of Beavers's paintings.  With individual features (eyes, lips, nails) separated from the rest of the face and body and removed from their original context, they're neither masculine nor feminine, thereby reiterating that makeup is for any (or no) gender.

All I can say is, I love these paintings.  Stylistically, they're right up my alley - big, colorful and mimicking makeup's tactile nature so much that I have a similar reaction to them as I do when seeing makeup testers in a store: I just want to dip my hands in them and smear them everywhere! I also enjoy the multiple themes and levels in her work. Beavers isn't commenting just on makeup in the digital age, but also self-representation online, shifting attitudes towards makeup's meaning, the relationship between painting and makeup, and Western art history.

What do you think of Beavers's paintings? 

[mamcollection]

TYLER SHIELDS, MOUTHFUL, 2017, Sotheby's - Erotic Passion & Desire Online

[mamcollection]

George Condo

The New Normal, 2020

Acrylic, pigment stick and metallic paint on linen 208.3 x 203.2 cm \ 82 x 80 inches

© George Condo. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Thomas Barratt.

[mamcollection]

赵无极，霸气。

总有一种宇宙混沌初开的感觉。

[mamcollection]

Victor Vasarely Title: Torony II Description: 1970 Wood multiple hand-painted with acrylic in colors on both sides, on a black painted wooden base. 24 1/2 x 18 x 2 5/8 in. (62.2 x 45.7 x 6.7 cm)

Signed in ink (faded) and numbered 'EA 10/18' in black ink (an artist's proof, the edition was 175), with occasional minute loss of paint at the extreme edge of the base of the sculpture, very soft scuffing in the purple on the signed side (mainly visible in raking light), occasional minor surface soiling on the side, a felt pad adhered to the base, consistent with this edition, otherwise in generally very good condition. Medium: Wood multiple hand-painted with acrylic in colors on both sides, on a black painted wooden base Year of Work: 1970 Size: Height 24.5 in.; Width 18 in.; Depth 2.6 in. / Height 62.2 cm.; Width 45.7 cm.; Depth 6.7 cm. Edition: E.A 10/18 Misc.: Signed Sale of: Phillips New York: Thursday, April 16, 2020 [Lot 00050] Editions: Online Estimate: 3,000 - 5,000 USD Sold For: 11,875 USD Premium

[mamcollection]

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) From Pink Shell inscribed 'Jan-25' (on the stretcher) oil on canvas 20 x 17 in. (50.8 x 43.2 cm.) Painted in 1931.

Provenance

The artist The Downtown Gallery, New York Private Collection, 1961 Private Collection, 1988 Wildenstein Gallery, New York, 2001 Private collection, California A.J. Kollar Fine Paintings LLC, Seattle Acquired from the above by the present owner

Winning Bid: $4.25M (Aisi Wang (王艾斯) )

Georgia O'Keeffe's lifelong fascination with the shapes and colors that she found in nature manifested itself in her various depictions of diverse physical forms. Natural objects ranging from sensuous shells and exotic flowers to more modest items, such as autumn leaves and skunk cabbage, found their way equally into her paintings. Painted in 1931, From Pink Shell demonstrates the artist's unique way of interpreting and simplifying these forms to create her compositions. O'Keeffe explained, "It is lines and colors put together so that they must say something. For me, that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint" (G. O’Keeffe, as quoted in C. Eldredge, Georgia O'Keeffe, New York, 1991, p. 36).

SALE 20201 -ONE: A Global Sale of the 20th Century, Christie’s

[mamcollection]

Record of A New Era of Evening Auctions  | June 30 2020

Sotheby’s First-Ever Hybrid Contemporary Evening Sale Format Nets an Impressive $300.4 Million. The carefully choreographed sale took place on three continents. 

If a time traveler from 2019 arrived at Sotheby’s evening sale on Monday evening, she would have been very confused by what she saw. There was no packed salesroom, no paddles, no air kissing. Instead, specialists were stationed six feet apart on tiered rows of phone banks and the entire production was livestreamed simultaneously from Hong Kong, London, and New York. The auction marked the first major test of the art-market’s upper echelons during the social-distancing era—and it would be fair to say the house passed. (artnet)

[mamcollection]

What Sold—and for How Much—in Art Basel 2020 Virtual Art Fair

David Zwirner

Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red) Jeff Koons $8 million

Hauser and Wirth 

The Press of Democracy, 2020 Mark Bradford $5,000,000

Painting Mixed media on canvas 287.0 x 359.4 (cm)113.0 x 141.5 (inch) 

‘The Press of Democracy’ (2020) features a loose urban grid in bright blue, with organic golds, browns, and blacks radiating from the center, evoking the release of mounting pressure caused by the suppression of kinetic energy. Using his signature techniques of layering paper, rope, and other materials onto canvas and processing the surface to reveal complex intersections between layers of meaning, Mark Bradford’s most recent work examines a world undone by crisis. Named after a chapter from ‘Gotham’, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s monumental history of New York City, ‘The Press of Democracy’ considers the unspooling of generations of established power structures. Bradford makes a case for the animating power of abstract painting at a moment when everything seems up for grabs.

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Gladstone Gallery

Untitled, 1982 Keith Haring $4.75 million

Painting Enamel and dayglo on metal 230.0 x 184.0 (cm)90.6 x 72.4 (inch) Provenance: The Keith Haring Foundation, New York

Throughout his career, Keith Haring (b. 1958, Reading, Pennsylvania) used his signature artistic vocabulary to become a spokesperson for his generation, responding to many of the urgent social and political issues that defined his lifetime. Beginning with his first works in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Haring developed a universal language comprised of iconographic motifs – including barking dogs and dancing figures – that remained accessible and recognizable to a global audience. 

The painting ‘Untitled’ (1982) is an iconic representation of how Haring employed these motifs to create an exuberant composition that speak to both formal expertise and brilliance in conveying social messages. Here, his use of day-glo paint captures the vibrant energy of his age, one shaped in part by a popular underground club culture, street art , and Neo-Expressionist painting. As an artist, Haring provided a unique take on universal concepts such as birth, death, love, and war, ultimately creating an oeuvre that remains as relevant today as it was during his lifetime.

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David Zwirner

Untitled (Blot), 2015 Kerry James Marshall $3 million (to an American museum)

Painting Acrylic on PVC panel 213.7 x 303.5 (cm)84.1 x 119.5 (inch)

Experience Kerry James Marshall's Untitled (Blot) in depth and explore Basel Online: 15 Rooms on David Zwirner Online → Engaged in an ongoing dialogue with six centuries of representational painting, Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) has deftly reinterpreted and updated its tropes, compositions, and styles. At the center of his prodigious oeuvre, which also includes drawings and sculpture, is the critical recognition of the conditions of invisibility so long ascribed to black figures in the Western pictorial tradition. For his Blots series, Marshall utilizes the language of abstraction to suggest alternative ways in which black experiences are formally manifested in painting. Like his more familiar figurative images, the artist’s Blots invite viewers to consider what, and whom, the history of abstraction has obscured.

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Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York

The Nineties (1980) Ed Ruscha $2.4 million

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Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco

Untitled (87-33) (1987) Donald Judd $1.85 million

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White Cube

Komplementär bräunlich (2012) Georg Baselitz $1.66 million:

Baselitz cites as an influence Italian abstract painter Lucio Fontana, who made his images by slicing or digging into monochromatic fields of colour to reveal black voids behind the picture plane: “I wanted an apparition, something that appears out of the depth”.

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Hauser and Wirth

The Fragile (2007) Louise Bourgeois $1.5 million

Diagonal Evolution (2020) George Condo $1.4 million

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Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Elke in Frankreich II (2019) Georg Baselitz $1.35 million

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Luhring Augustine, New York

Untitled (1990) Glenn Ligon $1.2 million

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Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

White Snow Cake (2017) Paul McCarthy $1.2 million

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Galerie Max Hetzler

Intervals 6, 2019 Bridget Riley  $1.2 million

Painting oil on linen 271.0 x 181.0 (cm)106.7 x 71.3 (inch)

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Hauser and Wirth

Untitled, 1972  Ed Clark $1.2 million

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David Zwirner

Pastel (1991) Joan Mitchell > $1 million

Work on Paper

City, 1928 - 1936 Josef Albers $1 million

Painting Tempera on Masonite in artist's frame 56.2 x 109.9 (cm)22.1 x 43.3 (inch)

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Almine Rech, Brussels

The Dreamer (2008) George Condo $950,000–1 million

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Skarstedt

Ralf III (Remix), 2005 Georg Baselitz $900,000

Painting oil on canvas 300.0 x 250.0 (cm)118.1 x 98.4 (inch)

'Ralf III (Remix)' belongs to Georg Baselitz’s acclaimed Remix series, a self-referential body of work that the artist began in the autumn of 2005, in which he revisits and re-interprets subjects from earlier decades of his practice. Addressing his own personal history through the lens of retrospection, the Remix series confronts how perceptions evolve and transform over time, especially within the context of Germany’s dark and troubled past which so persistently reveals itself in Baselitz’s work. Often enlarged and rapidly painted, the spontaneity with which the works in the series are executed gives rise to mnemonic flashes of things in the past, present, and future. Extreme transformations of the their muted, more ponderous forerunners, this particular work makes reference to Baselitz’s Ralf series painted in 1965. 'Ralf-kopf' pre-dates Baselitz’s inverted pictures by four years and sits within a seminal body of work that would form the basis of Baselitz’s artistic investigations that still continue today. The character Ralf is an imaginary depiction of fellow neo-expressionist painter A.R. Penck (real name Ralf Winkler) who is depicted once again in the present work, held in a moment of isolated introspection. Baselitz would paint three versions of Ralf in 1965, one of which now resides in the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

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Galerie Max Hetzler

The Flaming Fields, 2020 Walton Ford $850,000

Painting watercolour, gouache and ink on paper 212.1 x 151.8 (cm)83.5 x 59.8 (inch)

VAT, where applicable, is not included in the asking price.

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Hauser and Wirth

$850,000: Lee Lozano, No Title (ca. 1964) $730,000, $619,000: Günther Förg, Untitled (2007)

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David Zwirner

Im Turm, 2019 Neo Rauch $500,000

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Levy Gorvy

Mother, 2020 Dan Colen $500,000

Painting Oil on canvas 149.9 x 383.5 (cm)59.0 x 151.0 (inch)

“I have a natural inclination towards using nostalgia as a creative prompt. I have always been interested in the power of cliché. But I still feel very connected to the idea that an artwork must be a reflection of my most individual self and an expression of my most intimate feelings. And so these Mother paintings allow me to explore that tension between the deeply personal and the universal.” —Dan Colen

Dan Colen began his Mother series in 2013, using stills from animated Disney films as source imagery and translating their compositions into traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.

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Lisson Gallery

Listening to the Poets, 2020 Stanley Whitney $450,000

Painting Oil on linen 243.8 x 304.8 (cm) 96.0 x 120.0 (inch)

“I don’t worry about what the color does. If it feels right, if it sits right... To me, it’s all about how things feel. I never know what the colors are going to be... I’m trying to open up space, for people to wander.” — Stanley Whitney

Discussing color entails abstraction; any color represents much more than its literal color, and the discussion is abstract especially when the paintings aren’t representational.

The effects of color call up many responses: visceral, physical, neurological, instinctive, impulsive, adjectives that require others to satisfy or elucidate usage. I can say: the eye communicates with the brain, so that we see. The brain receives signals and creates, constructs, or pieces together an image. It’s involuntary activity, as are sensations, which have no organic basis.

“I don’t know what color does,” Whitney tells me, and says he doesn’t have a theory of color. His art engages with and is about that question, actively playing and working with perception, involuntary responses as well as voluntary ones. Knowing something about painting will usually charge a viewer’s relationship to a painting, and bring other meanings to it.

– Lynne Tillman, Afternoon Paintings, Lisson Gallery catalogue, 2020

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Stephen Friedman Gallery

Happiness Beyond Paradise, 2020 Luiz Zerbini $400,000-450,000

Acrylic on canvas300 x 600cm (118 1/8 x 236 1/4in)

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Hauser and Wirth

Still Life, 2020 Nicolas Party $250,000

Source: Ocula, ArtnetNews

[mamcollection]

Alex Katz

Red Dancer 2, 2019

Screenprint in colors on Saunders paper 44 x 88 in. (111.76 x 223.52 cm.) Signed and numbered in pencil

Edition of 60 Lococo Fine Art, St. Louis, pub.

44 x 88 in. (111.76 x 223.52 cm.)

Est. 18,000—24,000 USD

Opening Bid 16,000 USD

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As one of the most important proponents of figurative realism, Alex Katz has been painting portraits for nearly 50 years, synthesizing a kind of color field abstraction with realism. Often portraying people from the New York art and intellectual scenes, the artist generalizes the features of his subjects and reduces the work to formal properties of light, color and scale, thereby making the faces in his work more familiar to all possible viewers. This particular piece depicts a woman's face in tight close-up with her head down and eyes closed as her brown hair provides a stark contrast to the red background that outlines her shoulder and illuminates her skin tone.

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Coca-cola Girl 5, 2019

Medium: 20-color silkscreen on Saunders Waterford High White HP 425 gsm fine art paper Size: 40 x 56 inches (102 x 142 cm) Edition: 60 Price: $16,000

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ALEX KATZ, ALEX AND ADA, THE 1960'S TO THE 1980'S (8 bids sold 43750 USD, July 2020 Sotheby's)

[mamcollection]

Galerie Max Mayer

Bon Ton Mais Non, 2016 Irena Haiduk < $10,000

Other Materials This item's price is assessed through flexible pricing. Slide out book. 1000 45 min 31.3 x 21.3 x 1.0 (cm)12.3 x 8.4 x 0.4 (inch) 0.46 kg

An 80 point manifesto on polite art. Like every intimate dinner party, Bon Ton Mais Non requires one symphony orchestra, a pastry chef, a large mirror, and the fact of cannibal sirens. Bon Ton Mais Non is the first thing Irena Haiduk sold through flexible pricing. The book's price is based on the income level of the person wishing to acquire it: lower, middle or upper. After the transaction, the word “Hope” on the sleeve of the book is crossed out, and beneath it, in large black letters, the first name of the reader is inscribed. On the reverse side the price, the date and the location of the transaction is documented. Second edition, 2016. 21.3 x 31.3 x 1 cm, 96 pages. Designed by Studio HelloMe. Published by Yugoexport.

[mamcollection]

Stephen Friedman Gallery

Three Watches of the Night, 2020 

Marina Adams

$70,000

Painting Acrylic on linen 223.5 x 198.0 (cm)88.0 x 78.0 (inch)

‘Three Watches of the Night’ is an immersive new painting by American artist Marina Adams. This work features luminous forms of mustard yellow, deep red, olive green, blue, black and indigo. Interlocking and overlapping, these shapes act in harmony whilst also holding their own, alive with the potential to move and shift. Whilst the painting’s geometric harmonies have an immediate impact, the visible brushstrokes that break up these areas of colour introduce a haptic quality that rewards sustained attention. A protest against what Adams terms our “culture of convenience”, the painting’s meditative feel is reflected in its title, which refers to Buddha’s enlightened vision of life as pure energy. Adams explains, “Thinking about the world in terms of energy, as an energetic space, really interests me [in terms of] what I’m doing here in the studio—what I’m putting into the world and how I’m trying to communicate.”

In Artforum, Barry Schwabsky praises the delicate balance of dynamism and control that characterises the artist’s work. “[E]verything seems animated, in movement,” he writes. “The energy impelling this motion is never agitated or frantic but rather feels steady, relaxed, and spontaneously responsive.” This sense of openness and fluidity stems from Adams’ working process. Sketching out a basic framework loosely with charcoal to “free” her for experimentation, Adams then adjusts to the needs of the composition as she works. Shaping the formal structure of her paintings by sampling motifs from the traditions of textile design and architecture, Adams conjures a universal lexicon of colour and form. The artist explains, “Pattern is a language that crosses boundaries. It offers common ground… what I love is that it forces you to get very basic, and it’s in basic truths that we can find communion.”

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Maxixe, 2020

Luiz Zerbini

$120,000

Painting Acrylic on canvas 160.0 x 160.0 (cm)63.0 x 63.0 (inch)

Inspired by the Atlantic and Amazon rainforests, ‘Maxixe’ conveys the immersive and seductive quality of the Brazilian landscape. Titled after an energetic dance known as the ‘Brazilian tango’, the painting is a vibrant whirl of colour and form. Juxtaposing abstract shapes with areas of pattern that evoke flora and fauna, this work reflects Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini’s ongoing interest in the relationship between nature and humanity in and around Rio de Janeiro. “I think it’s a reflection of the place I live,” he explains. “Rio de Janeiro has a huge forest just inside of the city. Everything is mixed. It’s an urban landscape, but it’s really full of nature.”

For this new painting, Zerbini uses the quadrangular grid as a primary structuring device. An emblem of modernist thought, the grid is typically associated with the static, antinatural and systematic. By incorporating curvilinear shapes and expressive patterns derived from organic forms, Zerbini transforms the grid’s tight squares into lenses in a kaleidoscopic vision. This dizzying combination captures the intoxicating sights and sounds of the Brazilian city, the mosaic pavements and façades of tower blocks surrounded with verdant life. Waving, leaf-like forms and dense patterns interrupt the rectilinear grid and lend the composition a natural rhythm that recalls the movement of water or trees swaying in the breeze.

In a career, spanning over three decades, Zerbini has developed a complex visual vocabulary rooted at the intersection of figuration and abstraction. He first emerged within the generational (and global) ‘return to painting’ of the 1980s, centred in the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, Rio de Janeiro and subsequently defined by the landmark exhibition ‘Como vai você Geração 80?’ (How Are You Doing, 80s Generation?, 1984). ‘Fire’, Zerbini’s second solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery will open in late 2020. This follows Zerbini’s acclaimed solo exhibition at South London Gallery in 2018 and a major presentation in the group exhibition 'Trees' at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, in 2019. At Fondation Cartier, Zerbini transformed the main gallery into an urban jungle, combining a large-scale herbarium — complete with a living fig tree — with hyperreal paintings of the rainforest and symbols of Brazilian modernity.

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Taxonomies, 2019

Channing Hansen

$85,000

Other Materials Hand spun, hand dyed wool; synthetic fibres; and redwood 182.0 x 215.0 (cm)71.7 x 84.6 (inch)

A striking example of Channing Hansen's practice, ‘Taxonomies’ is the first in an ongoing series of modular textile works by the American artist. Committed to each step of the making process, Hansen is deeply involved in the sourcing and production of the fibre he uses and even washes, dyes, blends and spins the wool himself. This new work is comprised of forty-two hand-knitted constructions stretched over individual wooden frames. Straddling the boundary between painting and sculpture, ‘Taxonomies’ explores yarn’s capacity to denote line, plane or volume. Combining dense protrusions of stitching with more open sections that resemble the patterns found in lace, Hansen produces a dynamic play of abstract shapes. This use of formal as well as chromatic variation contrasts with the repetitive, grid-like structure to achieve a mesmerising, organic visual rhythm.

Referring to the process of classifying elements within a larger system, ‘Taxonomies’ stems from Hansen’s creation of indexical paintings for each new body of work. Despite their spontaneous appearance, the design for each painting within a series is derived from a computer algorithm. Unaware of how the finished work will look until it is complete, Hansen relies purely on the algorithm to guide combinations of colour, fibre, and knit. Each past indexical work displays the variables that Hansen made available to the algorithm within a particular series. ‘Taxonomies’ captures the artist’s impulse to “look back and take stock”, mapping the forty-two variables used up to the time of its making. A record of the artist’s creative decision making, ‘Taxonomies’ embodies Hansen’s ongoing fascination with what he describes as "the idea that humans themselves embody an infinite number of potential algorithms." Combining influences from the realms of craft, technology, science and art history, the work captures Hansen’s unique reassertion of what it means to make a painting.

[mamcollection]

The Modern Institute

Tranquillity Base (black), 2020

Eva Rothschild

$63,500

Sculpture Painted steel 185.0 x 75.0 x 67.0 (cm)72.8 x 29.5 x 26.4 (inch)

Eva Rothschild’s practice is predominately sculptural, constructed with ever increasing variety of materials and processes. Indeed, whilst consistently referencing the conventional materiality of sculpture – encompassing ideas of form, space and scale – Rothschild’s work displays an attentiveness to a contemporary relationship between society and the individual, the physical presence of the body and its role both in the act of making and experiencing an artwork. Crucially, the installation and diverse materiality of Rothschild’s work encourages a physical and aesthetic response from the viewer, as they navigate their own corporeality in proximity to the work and the architecture of the surrounding space.

Our presentation includes new works by Rothschild highlighting a key exhibiting run for the artist whose presentation for Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2019, ‘The Shrinking Universe’, is touring with The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin the next venue to host the Rothchild’s expansive installation.

Work dimensions: 186 x 75 x 67 cm Plinth dimensions 120 x 30 x 30 cm

Also pictured:

Tranquillity Base (white) 2020 Painted steel Work dimensions: 186 x 75 x 67 cm Plinth dimensions 120 x 30 x 30 cm

$63,500

[mamcollection]

Anima Mundi 世界灵魂; 宇宙灵魂

von Bartha

Anima Mundi 42-3, 2019 Imi Knoebel $110,000

Painting Acrylic on aluminium 37.0 x 127.0 x 5.8 (cm)14.6 x 50.0 x 2.3 (inch)

b. 1940 in Dessau, Germany / Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany

Knoebel stud­ied from 1962 – 64 at the Werkkun­stschule (School for Applied Arts) in Darm­stadt and moved in 1964, fas­ci­nated by the teach­ing style and per­son­al­ity of Joseph Beuys, to the Kun­stakademie (Art Acad­emy) in Düs­sel­dorf. Knoebel, how­ever, dis­tanced him­self from the other Beuys stu­dents and devel­oped his own, min­i­mal­ist style, influ­enced by its great fore­run­ner Kazimir Male­vich. Fol­low­ing puris­tic line draw­ings, light pro­jec­tions and white paint­ings (1972 – 75) Knoebel turned to colour for the first time in 1974. During the 1980s the artist experimented with found objects, incorporating them within his installation pieces. Continuing his investigation into the medium of painting, Knoebel has also expanded his practice to an architectural scale; his largest commission to date saw the artist design several stained glass windows for the Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral, installed in 2011 and 2015.

[mamcollection]

Peres Projects

DMT, 2020 Richard Kennedy $25,001 - $50,000

Painting Acrylic on canvas 270.0 x 180.0 (cm)106.3 x 70.9 (inch)

Richard Kennedy’s (b. 1985, Long Beach, California, US) multi-disciplinary practice is interested in relationships and navigating sexuality as it occurs at the inter- section of class, race and gender. His professional background is in music and opera, through which he initially began communicating and elaborating these ideas. Considering opera through a language of African American experience – drawing on the oral histories told through spirituals and chain gang songs, Kennedy disrupts the tradition of Western Theatre, where the primary mode of engagement is through observation, in order to generate new participatory modes of viewership. Throughout the process of creating costumes and set design for opera, Kennedy was led to painting, sculpture and video – drawing on a process of layering, obfuscation, and temporality (slowness) that contradicts his practice in live performance. Kennedy had his debut solo exhibition at Peres Projects, Berlin, and since has presented solo performance works at ICA Richmond, The Studio Museum Harlem, MoMA, The Shed, The Kitchen, BOFFO Performance Festival and Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. Upcoming solo-participation includes the Zabludowicz Collection of London and a group exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. For additional information on the artist please click here.

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RICHARD KENNEDY

LADY LAND, 2020

Painting - Acrylic on canvas 200 x 165 cm (79 x 65 in)

Courtesy Peres Projects, Berlin