NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips’ first New York auction of 2021, the livestreamed New Now sale on 3 March will feature over 200 works by some of today’s most sought-after artists, including Matthew Wong, Hernan Bas, Joy Labinjo, Lucas Arruda, Eric Parker, and Vaughn Spann. A staple of the auction season known for championing emerging talent, the New Now sale features the auction debut of Jan-Ole Schiemann, Nikki Maloof, Brandon Landers, Raúl de Nieves and Allison Zuckerman. Works of exceptional provenance will be included, with McArthur Binion's Looking for White: One, 2013 hailing from the esteemed Collection of Pamela and William Royall. The sale will also feature Nam June Paik’s Gotherbot , 1994, from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, and a selection of cutting-edge works from the Tiroche DeLeon Collection demonstrate the breadth and innovation of some of the most exciting Latin American artists working today, including Gabriel Kuri and Maria Nepomuceno.
“We’re excited to kick off the season with such a stellar roster of artists, many of whom saw new records set in Phillips’ Fall sales across London, Hong Kong and New York” says Patrizia Koenig, Head of New Now, New York. “Last year, our international community of collectors embraced Phillips’ many bidding platforms, with over two-thirds of the lots in our September auction receiving online bids. We are confident that their enthusiasm will continue into 2021 and want to encourage all of our bidders around the globe to raise their ‘digital’ paddles for a truly worthy cause; a painting on paper has been donated directly by artist Eddie Martinez to benefit the nonprofit organization RxART, whose mission is to help children heal through the power of visual art.”
Two examples by Matthew Wong will be included in the auction, including the painting on paper Horizon Light, 2019 and Lotus, 2017, a virtuosic example of the late artist's sought-after landscape paintings that leads the sale. These are the first works by Wong that Phillips is offering after achieving a new auction record in Hong Kong In December, just 7 months after the artist was first introduced to auction. Taking his artistic forebears as a point of departure to learn from, but also transcend, Wong creates dreamlike painterly realms in which color, line and form powerfully coalesce. Overflowing with a sense of urgency and speed, in this work we recognize a painter making claim to his own place in the annals of art history.
Peter Saul's Lawd, 1968, represents the first time a work of major 1960s painting by the artist has come to auction since 2017. Saul came to prominence in the 1960s with exuberant paintings that blended influences from Surrealism and history painting with vernacular culture and the real-life shock and horror of current events at the time. One of America’s boldest and most iconoclastic painters, Peter Saul's provocative oeuvre was subject to the recent major exhibition Peter Saul: Crime And Punishment at the New Museum, New York.
Also highlighting the sale is Vaughn Spann’s Dalmatian (No. 3), the third painting by artist to come to auction since Phillips introduced his work to the secondary market in September 2020. One of the most unique voices working today, Vaughn Spann’s incredibly diverse oeuvre oscillates between figuration and abstraction. Calling Titus Kaphar and Rashid Johnson his two primary mentors, Spann engages his practice with social politics, the history of art, and activism. His work coalesces the forms of personal memory—in this case, his childhood aspiration of owning a Dalmatian as the epitome of luxury and the American dream—with formalist interrogations of abstraction.
Lucas Arruda’s Untitled is an evocative example of the quietly charged landscape paintings with which the artist has been catapulted to international recognition. Painted from memory and characterized by their subtle rendition of light, Arruda’s intimately scaled works are devoid of specific references to reality but suffused with the atmospheric in a manner that recalls the grand landscapes of J.M.W Turner. After international shows in recent years including a major solo show at the Fridericianum in Kassel and inclusion in the acclaimed exhibition ‘Luogo e Sengi’ presented by the Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2019, Arruda has been catapulted to international recognition. Works of Aurruda’s form part of notable public collections including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
On the heels of Phillips’ auction record for Hernan Bas in December 2020, the New Now auction will feature Bas’ Downhill at Dusk (The Runaway). Painted in 2008, it is a stunning example of the artist’s expressionistic and sensual figurative painting that explore questions of sexuality and identity through the iconography of the male androgynous dandy. Taking cues from late 19th century painting, Bas here creates a lush, fantastical landscape in which a lone figure perches on a palm tree, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of color. Described by the artist as evocative of the lush Floridian landscape, Downhill at Dusk (The Runaway) notably served as the source imagery of a limited-edition impressions the artist created for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County.
