David Batchelor (b. 1955)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
David Batchelor (b. 1955)

Brick Lane Remix I

Details
David Batchelor (b. 1955)
Brick Lane Remix I
shelving units, found light boxes, fluorescent lights, acrylic sheets, cable and plugboards
overall: 80 3/8 x 171 1/8 x 14 7/8in. (204 x 435 x 38cm.)
Executed in 2003
Provenance
Wilkinson Gallery, London.
Acquired from the above in 2004.
Literature
Shiny Dirty, exh. cat., Birmingham, Ikon Gallery, 2004 (illustrated in colour, pp. 8-9).
Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, London 2009 (installation view illustrated in colour, pp. 306 and 307).
Exhibited
Birmingham, Ikon Gallery, Shiny Dirty, 2004.
London, Saatchi Gallery, Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, 2011 (installation view illustrated in colour, pp. 12 and 13).
Special Notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 20% is payable on hammer price and buyer's premium

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Lot Essay

A shelving unit stacked with groups of brightly glowing rectangles of colour, Brick Lane Remix 1 is a beguiling interpretation of how colour is viewed within an urban environment. Flooding everyday items with a mesmerisingly bright palette of colour, David Batchelor has transformed ordinary components into a strikingly beautiful sculpture. Intended to be viewed from both front and back, we are presented with the clear monochrome forms as well as the electrical cables that snake from their rear. In making patent the source of the colour, Batchelor alerts us to the difference in the way colour is perceived in the city, where it is predominantly generated by electricity, and in nature, where it is viewed almost as a whole.

David Batchelor's work stems from a sheer delight in the myriad of brilliant hues from the urban environment, underlined by a critical interest in addressing colour theories within a contemporary context. His dazzlingly saturated objects consider the tension between form and the very materiality of colour, 'I often use colour to attack form, to break it down a little or begin to dissolve it. But I am not at all interested in pure colour or in colour as a transcendental presence So if I use colours to begin to dissolve forms, I also use forms to prevent colours becoming entirely detached from their everyday existence' (D. Batchelor, reproduced at https://www.saatchigallery. co.uk/artists/david_batchelor_articles.htm, [accessed 30th May 2013]).

Batchelor's installations breathe vibrant new life into found objects. The brightest possible palette fills the artists wide range of vehicles for colour, which range from neon-lit columns, to crates, spherical shapes and commercial lightboxes. 'When I make works from light boxes (such as Brick Lane Remix 1), or old plastic bottles with lights inside, I hope the illumination suspends their objecthood to some degree and makes the viewer see them a little differently see them as colours before seeing them as objects' (D. Batchelor, reproduced at https://www. saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/david_batchelor_articles.htm, [accessed 30th May 2013]). Consistent throughout his works is the lurking familiarity of the material leftovers of modern life, from factory scrap to disused or broken domestic items, re-purposed into hypnotic, beautifully patterned objects presenting a distillation of colours presence in our everyday environment.

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