Auctions: Contemporary Art and Design Evening and Under the Influence, March 7 and 8, 2013 @Phillips New York

For its Armory week offerings, Phillips has paired an Evening sale with its broader, more eclectic Under the Influence sale. The vast majority of the photography available can be found in the Under the Influence auction on Friday, with a liberal sprinkling of mid range works by both bold faced and lesser known names to be uncovered there. All in, there are a total of 86 lots of photography available across the two sessions, with a total High estimate for photography of $2002000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 31
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $232000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 46
Total Mid Estimate: $1040000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 9
Total High Estimate: $730000

The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 21, Richard Prince, Untitled (Massage), 1980-1981, estimated at $100000-150000 (image at right, top, via Phillips).

Here's the list of photographers represented by two or more lots in the sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Andy Warhol (4)
Slater Bradley (3)
Nan Goldin (3)
Marilyn Minter (3)
Vik Muniz (3)
Doug Aitken (2)
Sophie Calle (2)
Roland Fischer (2)
Anthony Goicolea (2)
Andreas Gursky (2)
Paul McCarthy (2)
Shirin Neshat (2 )
Eleonore Nitzschke (2)
Richard Prince (2)
Thomas Ruff (2)
Cindy Sherman (2)
Stephen Shore (2)
Spencer Tunick (2)

Other works of interest include lot 184, Doug Aitken, Cul de Sac, 2004, estimated at $60000-80000 (image at right, middle) and lot 25, Louise Lawler, Going, 2001/2002, estimated at $50000-70000 (image at right, bottom, all via Phillips.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Contemporary Art and Design) and here (Under the Influence).

Contemporary Art and Design Evening
March 7th

Under the Influence
March 8th

Phillips
450 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Photography at the 2011 Armory, Part 3 of 4

Part 3 of our 2011 Armory summary covers the entire left side Pier 94, left from the entrance area. Part 1 of the review (which includes an explanation of the format) can be found here; Part 2 can be found here.

Lisson Gallery (here): Rodney Graham (1), Maria Abramovic (group of 20)

Victoria Miro (here): Idris Khan (1), Isaac Julien (1), Doug Aitken (group of 20). This striking purple and orange grid of Aitken images was on an outside wall of the booth; I didn't get a price.

Max Wigram Gallery (here): Slater Bradley (1), James White (1)

Museum 52 (here): Mariah Robertson (1)

Galeria Senda (here): Massimo Vitali (1), Ola Kolehmainen (1), Jordi Bernardo (2)

Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois (here): Alain Bublex (1)

Nicholas Robinson Gallery (here): Petros Christostoumou (1), Indre Serpytyte (1)

Sean Kelly Galley (here): James Casebere (2), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Iran do Spirito Santo (4), Marina Abramovic (1), Frank Thiel (2). I liked the textured geometric uniformity of this monochrome Thiel. It was priced at 23000€.

Galerie Barbara Wien Wilma Lukatsch (here): Mariana Castillo Deball (4)

Carlier Gebauer (here): Jean-Luc Moulene (1)

Baronian_Francey (here): Florian Maier-Aichen (1)

Galerie Georg Kargl (here): Andreas Forarasi (1), David Maljkovic (1)

Yvon Lambert (here): David Claerbout (5+1 diptych)

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): Zwelethu Mthethwa (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), Carrie Mae Weems (grid of 42), Richard Mosse (1). This was the first time I've seen one of Mosse's infrared images of the Congo in person. The pink tonality of the mountainous jungle is truly electric; I'm looking forward to seeing an entire show of this body of work at some point soon. The image was priced at $19000.

BlainSouthern (here): Mat Collinshaw (13)

Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie (here): Hrafnkell Sigurdsson (1)

Buchmann Galerie (here): Bettina Pousttchi (2)

Galerie Daniel Templon (here): James Casebere (1)

Kavi Gupta Gallery (here): Curtis Mann (2). I continue to be impressed by these bleached images by Mann. I like the yellowed surface distortions and the glimpses of narrative underneath. This grid was $22000, and there were others to look at in a binder.

Workplace Gallery (here): Marcus Coates (1), Matt Stokes (1), Jo Coupe (1)

Parkett Publishers (here): Paul McCarthy (1), Annette Kelm (1)

Bugada & Cargnel (here): Cyprien Gaillard (4)

Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska (here): Josef Hoeflehner (2), Giovanni Castell (2), Olaf Otto Becker (2), Axel Hutte (1)

Ingleby Gallery (here): Garry Fabian Miller (7), Peter Liversidge (2), Susan Derges (1 diptych). I've always been a fan of Derges' work, especially the River Taw series of photograms. These images of water over sand have an amazing sparkle up close. Unfortunately, I didn't get a price.


Galeria Enrique Guerrero (here): Olga Adelantado (2). Pablo Helguera (6+slides on lightbox)

Faria Fabregas Galeria (here): Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (1)

Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporaneo (here): Adriana Bustos (2)

Galeria Nara Roesler (here): Paolo Bruscky (2)

Lucia de la Puente (here): Edi Hirose (9)

Galeria Isabel Aninat (here): Denise Lira-Ratinoff, Collectivo Aninat & Swinburn (4)

Part 4 of the Armory review can be found here.

Book: Doug Aitken, 99 Cent Dreams

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2008 by Aspen Art Press (here). 216 pages, with a total of 273 color and black and white images. Includes a short introductory text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobsen. The works in this volume were made between 1993 and 2007. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

Comments/Context: Doug Aitken is probably best recognized as a talented video artist, a maker of large scale, multi-screen installations and environments. What is perhaps a little less well known is that he is also an accomplished photographer, using the still frame of the photograph to explore many of the same themes found in his videos and films. This hefty monograph collects a significant portion of his photographic output from the past decade and provides an effective introduction to his photographic aesthetic.

Taken together, Aitken's pictures have been edited down into an exercise in non-linear story telling, of taking a narrative thread in one direction, letting it morph into something adjacent, following a tangential idea and then doubling back, repeating and improvising on common ideas, ending up with a swirling, switch-backing set of vignettes and moments that coalesce into an overall description of a way of living and its many moods. It's hard to say exactly what these images are "about": perhaps they are about the dislocating effects of our frenetic, nomadic 21st century lifestyle, of how mind-numbing travel leads to isolation and loneliness, or of how we somehow find ourselves and the small fragments of wonder in the world, caught between something more memorable or important.

There are plenty of subjects and themes that come back again and again in this body of work: shadowy single figures silhouetted against windows, bright squint inducing light fixtures, empty waiting rooms, airplane portholes, anonymous hallways and darkened hotel suites, abandoned junk, people seen from the back, parking garages and bus stations, the detritus of our lives, and the quiet of twilight. Time seems to speed up and abruptly slow down in this story, leaving us trapped in a fog of jet-lagged, motion-sick melancholy, fixating on some detail for just long enough to see something a little surprising or unexpected before we are whisked forward to yet another disconnected, disorienting limbo zone.

While most of these images have a casual, snapshot aesthetic, there is a remarkable consistency of vision across more than a decade of Aitken's shooting. This is a book that has grown on me as I have looked at it again and again, the work revealing its secrets modestly and slowly, telling the story patiently as I tried to reconcile some of its seemingly more random inclusions. Not every image is by any means a stand out or would necessarily function well as a single, solitary photograph, but the careful sequencing of the pictures delivers something subtle but profound, a multi-layered portrait of a transitory, in-between world.

Collector’s POV: Doug Aitken is represented by 303 Gallery in New York (here), Regen Projects in Los Angeles (here), Victoria Miro in London (here), and Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich (here). His photographic work has become more consistently available in the secondary markets in recent seasons, with a handful of lots coming up for sale each year. Prices have ranged between $2000 and $55000, based roughly on physical size and the number of works in the edition.

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)