LOS ANGELES, CA.- Tell Me What You Want (What You Really, Really Want), a new auction taking place at Bonhams in Los Angeles on March 31, will feature work by such pioneering artists as Richard Anuszkiewicz, Mathias Goeritz, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg. The auction will be introduced by a series of events, wine tastings and a preview party on March 28 with a performance by two professional players on the ping-pong table made by artist Ry Rocklen for his Trophy Modern series.

The auction is the latest platform for contemporary art at Bonhams. An auction first and foremost, it is also a broad celebration of contemporary art and culture. The auction room is a place where the auctioneer and the bidder come together, linked in a gestural union between the offering of an artwork and the raising of a paddle. Tell Me What You Want…, then, is not only a title, but also a self-reflexive description of what we do – and what we love to do. The auction will be a place where creative culture is exchanged, exhibited and discussed, but not without a dose of levity.

Los Angeles has always been a city which has nurtured ‘The Next’ – the desire to have the future now. It has long fostered an obsession with innovation and innovators, and Tell Me What You Want... is a response to that, offering approximately 100 works from some of the most influential artistic movements of the last few decades. The city which has emerged as a major capital for contemporary art will now play host to a premier auction, one which draws on the global reach of Bonhams to gather work from collections in New York, London, Hong Kong and beyond.

Op Art – one of contemporary art’s most well-known global movements – will be a highlight of Tell Me What You Want…, and encapsulates the auction’s position at the forefront of trends within the contemporary art market. Following the Bonhams world record sale of Op Art pioneer, Richard Anuszkiewicz’s painting in 2014, the auction will offer several important works of Op Art by Abraham Palatnik, Almir Mavignier from the Zero Movement, and Richard Anuszkiewicz himself. Of particular note is the rare work of Palatnik, a pioneering Brazilian artist who, in the 1950s, began creating work which sought to unify abstract painting and cinema. Bonhams is offering a kinechromatic lightbox by Palatnik which project a series of abstract images using a kaleidoscope of multi-colored bulbs and opaque panels. The work, thought to be the only one of its kind, is estimated at $150,000-250,000.

Work from some of the great names of 20th century art, such as Alighiero Boetti, Jim Dine and Susan Rothenberg, will also be included, along with pieces from the progressive practices of today, from artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Vik Muniz and Maurizio Cattelan. A fantastic chalkboard drawing of the Runyan Canyon in L.A. by Claes Oldenburg, created for Los Angeles County Museum of Art Senior Curator Maurice Tuchman, will also star.

A special exhibition has been organized in tandem with the auction – Trophy Modern by Los Angeles artist, Ry Rocklen. The exhibition comprises a series of works using trophy parts as a raw material for newly created objects. Bonhams will exhibit and offer three works: a 14 foot (4.26 meter) bar, a ping-pong table, and a set of bleachers, all of which will be used during the events in March in the lead-up to the auction.

Dane Jensen, Specialist in the Contemporary Art Department in Los Angeles, said: “Tell Me What You Want and its accompanying programming aims to establish the auction as not only a place to collect art, but as a space in which to see, experience and participate in Los Angeles’s contemporary landscape – one which has now staked its claim as one of the most important and dynamic cultural centers in the world.”