Amelia Manderscheid’s Top Picks from First Open/ONLINE
Amelia Manderscheid
Specialist, Head of Sale, Post-War & Contemporary Art
LOT 1
Catherine Opie (b. 1961)
Untitled #13 (Surfers)
$30,000–40,000
“An extension of Catherine Opie’s interest in ‘cultural portraiture,’ this series depicts surfers off the coast of Malibu. Frequently obscured by the early morning mist and fog, the surfers are almost entirely abstract as they are shown waiting for the perfect wave. From surfers and ice fishers to queer subcultures, Opie’s works reflect her interest in temporary communities that cut through social divisions.”
LOT 2
David Ostrowski (b. 1981)
F (Gee Vaucher)
$25,000–35,000
“David Ostrowski dissects the nature of painting in his work, undermining its foundations of form, line, and color in favor of experimenting with speed, imperfection and coincidence, which is exactly what we see in F (Gee Vaucher), a work that serves as a record of the artist’s additions and deletions. This work is a prime example of Ostrowski’s F Paintings; its generic title was chosen partly in homage to the artist’s favorite letter, but also relates to the words ‘frame,’ ‘fame,’ ‘failure’ and ‘farbe,’ the German term for color.”
LOT 5
Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959)
Baby I’m alone Tonight
$15,000–20,000
“A father of the Tokyo Pop movement, Nara’s comic illustration drawings are simultaneously playful and sinister. His work fuses a variety of Japanese subcultures with an influx of popular culture from the West. In Baby I’m alone Tonight, a cartoon child kicks a yellow ball above text suggestive of pop song lyrics, evoking loneliness and nascent sexuality. Unlike the composed structure of Nara’s paintings, his drawings embody a raw immediacy—reinforced by the artist’s use of graph paper as a medium.”
LOT 13
Louise Lawler (b. 1947)
Down
$18,000–22,000
“Many of Lawler’s photographs comment on the inner workings of the art world, depicting paintings hung in a collector’s home or leaning against the halls of an auction house. In Down, the white walls and monochrome floor are suggestive of a gallery space, though the unpacked mannequins evade easy categorization. Rather than depict the finished product—the exhibition—Lawler unveils the activity before and after the main event, the unpacking and repacking of the art.”
LOT 64
Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965)
Untitled
$25,000–35,000
“Painted a year before she graduated from the School for Visual Arts in New York, this work is a rare early example of Peyton’s student output prior to her rise to international acclaim. Known for her portraiture of celebrities and art world personalities, inanimate objects painted by the artist from such an early period in her career do not often appear on the market for sale.”