NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips de Pury & Company announced highlights from its Contemporary Art Under the Influence auction that will take place on March 8th.
“Phillips de Pury Company has always been ahead of new trends in the contemporary art market. Our March sales present an excellent opportunity for collectors to participate in the buoyant auction market for recent works by emerging and established artists, alongside the galleries showing during Armory week.” Corey Barr, Specialist, Contemporary Art, Head of Sale, Under the Influence.
STERLING RUBY Supermax Wall, 2006, estimated at $50,000 - 70,000. Among the luminaries of a new generation of contemporary artists, Sterling Ruby has established a versatile and impressive practice, ranging from sculpture to video art and large-scale, graffitied canvases. Supermax Wall refers to the high security detention prisons, which, as a reformatory, rely heavily on physical detainment and the concept of individual time. Using his own interpretation of the Supermax system, Ruby has been developing an environment where attempts at expression are seen as nothing more than signs of criminality. Ruby's concept of Supermax refers to the opposition between larger social structures and individual desire—addressing primal, expressive, aggressive, and sexual undertones.
PHIL FROST Thunderwhisper, 2004 estimated at $30,000 - 40,000. Self-taught artist Phil Frost harnesses aspects of urban culture, abstraction, tribalism, and modern design to fashion his unique portfolio of work, incorporating painted walls, graffiti, and collage, as well as found objects and imagery, to craft his large-scale pieces. A sparkling white pattern, Frost’s signature technique, allows fragments of bold colors and contrasting materials to shine though. Drawn free-hand, without the use of stenciling, the brightness of the white pattern appears to form a mysterious code—an exotic language, composed of letters, hearts, dots and mask-like faces. All famed elements of Frost’s technique combine in Thunderswhisper, placing it among the grandest and most celebrated of his works.
JOHANNES KAHRS Senseless Apparition of Love Taking Hold of C. Ghilglieno, 1998, estimated at $70,000 - 90,000. Johannes Kahrs' large-scale work appropriates imagery from popular culture, such as cinema, music, television and current events, infusing them with deep psychological allusions and mystery. Senseless Apparition of Love Taking Hold of C. Ghilglieno is an excellent example of Kahrs’ innate talent for dark theatricality. The work is comprised of a black and white drawing depicting the body of Carlo Chiglieno, an executive of Fiat, who was killed by a far-left organization in 1979. A spotlight installed above the drawing shines downward and an audio cassette player plays the song "Manina Morta", which translates to "dead hand".
ANDRO WEKUA Waiting for the Shadow, 2007, estimated at $25,000 – 35,000. Wekua’s Waiting for the Shadow exemplifies the artist’s striking use of color and illusory texture, drifting between mediums to awaken the viewer’s perceptive and introspective instincts. His imagery often evokes memories from his childhood in Soviet Georgia, turning his works into mosaic-like stories that shed light on complex ideas of home, melancholy and the East and West divide. Wekua’s technique involves layering paint and collage in both systematic and improvised ways, thereby obscuring and transforming images that might otherwise be interpreted as purely testimonial. Through his work, Wekua suggests that how we envision and create our personal histories involves just as much imagination as it does reality.
TOMÁS SARACENO 12 SE/ Flying Garden / Air-Port-City, 2007, estimated at $10,000 - 15,000. Saraceno’s work has long been known to tread the arbitrary lines between architecture, art, science and urban planning. He draws inspiration from some of the smallest details of our daily lives—such as soap bubbles and spider webs—and turns them into instruments that can change how human beings interact and coexist with one another. 12 SE/ Flying Garden / Air-Port-City presents the artist’s model for a new human experience and socio-cultural stage: a flying city. Comprised of interconnected webs and balloons, the flying city would eliminate notions of nationhood and political boundaries, allowing for free and uninterrupted relationships between its inhabitants. Saraceno’s aesthetic resourcefulness turns the gallery space into a biosphere, a laboratory where form meets function in imaginative and unexpected ways.
Eight lots will be sold to benefit Friends of E.1027, an organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of Eileen Gray’s seminal modernist villa in Roquebrune, France, including works by ROSEMARIE TROCKEL, ARMAN, LEO VILLAREAL, PETER HALLEY, ERIN O'KEEFE, DAVID LEVINTHAL, WILLIAM COPLEY and WAYNE GONZALES.
Additional highlights include: KYMIA NAWABI, The Bridge, 2011, estimated at $7,000 – 9,000; AARON CURRY, Untitled, 2010, estimated at $10,000 - 15,000; FRIEDRICH KUNATH, Untitled, 2006, estimated at $9,000 - 12,000; RYAN MCGINNESS, Panex, 2007, estimated at $40,000 - 60,000; SETH PRICE, Untitled, 2007, estimated at $10,000 - 15,000; RUDOLF STINGEL, STI-015, 1992, estimated at $15,000 - 20,000; GARTH WEISER, Gran Turismo, 2008, estimated at $12,000 - 18,000 ; DAVID NOONAN, Untitled, 2005, estimated at $15,000 - 20,000.
