11:00 AM Central Time, Thursday, June 25

Curators' Picks: June 25 Contemporary Art Within Reach Showcase Auction
Our curators picked their favorite items from our upcoming June 25 Contemporary Art Within Reach Showcase Auction.
| Frank's Pick Frank Hettig | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art
Larry Bell MEL 24, 1984
Created in 1984, MEL 24 is part of Larry Bell's MEL series, a body of work that demonstrates the artist's enduring fascination with light and perception. What I find most engaging about this work is how its metallic vapor surface appears to change as one moves around it, making the act of viewing an active experience. Although executed on paper, MEL 24 captures the same sense of optical transformation that characterizes Bell's celebrated glass sculptures, reflecting his lifelong exploration of the relationship between light, space, and the viewer. Bell's work has been the subject of significant solo museum exhibitions at institutions including the Tate Gallery in London, the Phoenix Art Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and SITE Santa Fe, underscoring his position as one of the leading figures of the California Light and Space movement. That's the attraction of our Contemporary Art Within Reach auctions: to get a primary example of important artists - and within financial reach.
| Holly's Picks Holly Sherratt | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, West Coast
William T. Wiley Bonejo; Portrait of the Bonejo (pair), 2001-2008; 2009
William T. Wiley's Bonejo and Portrait of Bonejo embody the inventive spirit of the California Funk movement, blending humor, wordplay, and an appreciation for the creative potential of ordinary materials. The watercolor depicts Wiley's studio, where the handmade instrument known as Bonejo appears among tools, objects, and works in progress, while the accompanying sculpture gives physical form to that whimsical creation. Drawing on folk traditions and assemblage, the works celebrate the ingenuity that transforms simple materials into objects of delight. William T. Wiley was the subject of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's retrospective What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect (2009).
David James Gilhooly Mona Lisa Art Cheese, 1983
Another member of the influential California Funk movement, David Gilhooly transformed Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated Mona Lisa into a giant wheel of Swiss cheese. Gilhooly studied under Robert Arneson at UC Davis and became best known for his FrogWorld mythology-a decades-long series of anthropomorphic frogs that satirized human society. A rare example of his large-scale food imagery, Mona Lisa Art Cheese, combines one of the world's most famous paintings with a humble grocery staple, its monumental scale heightening the work's comic effect.
| Desiree's Pick Desiree Pakravan | Consignment Director, Modern & Contemporary Art
Lee Mullican Creation of the World from Space in Mind, Series One, 1985-86
Lee Mullican's Creation of the World from Space in Mind from Series One is a captivating oil painting that exemplifies the artist's visionary approach to abstraction. Drawing on themes of cosmology, creation, and spiritual inquiry, Mullican fills the surface with intricate networks of marks, symbols, and radiant forms that suggest vast celestial landscapes and primordial energies. A founding member of the Transcendental Painting Group, he sought to express realities beyond ordinary perception, creating works that bridge the physical and metaphysical realms. Rich in texture and rhythmic detail, this work reflects Mullican's enduring exploration of the universe as both a cosmic and spiritual phenomenon and would make a dynamic addition to any collection.
| Walter's Pick Walter Ramirez | Consignment Director, Urban Art
Meeson Pae Fissures, 2023
Meeson Pae is recognized for her distinctive abstract paintings that explore the intersection of the organic and the technological. Through layered compositions and fluid, biomorphic forms, she creates immersive worlds that blur the boundaries between nature, the body, and digital culture. In the work Fissures from 2023, Pae's sophisticated handling of color, texture, and structure exemplifies the visual language that has made her one of the most compelling emerging voices in contemporary abstraction.
| Rebecca's Pick Rebecca Lax | Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples
Sam Falls Untitled, 2012
A lovely painting by Sam Falls which caught my eye. The muslin surface with its’ transparent staining spreading out from an indigo/cobalt/purple looping line, would make a wonderful complement to a collection of Asian ceramics. The color and texture of the muslin surface in beiges, tans, supports wet image areas of blue colors would ultimately be a perfect match to a collection of Japanese ceramics leaning more toward stoneware. Or this is just a beautiful painting to complement and spice up a neutral interior in beige tones. The overall size is a perfect horizontal.
| Carter's Picks Carter Adcox | Cataloger, European and Modern & Contemporary Art
Christie Scheele River Mood, 2005
I first encountered Christie Scheele as a colorist in the pages of Marvel Comics' Daredevil. Having been aware of the fine art backgrounds of many colorists in the industry, it was a pleasant surprise to see an example of this work cross my easel. Scheele pays a subtle attention to light in her landscapes, finding her own work to be "closer to the color field paintings of Rothko than to traditional or plein air landscape painters," a sentiment on full display in River Mood. The upper half of the composition rests entirely in the nuances of a twilight sky and below, the sharp profile of a city skyline softens into a distant haze. Scheele's work drips with atmosphere and it was a delight to see firsthand a familiar name at work in an unfamiliar capacity.
Stipan Tadić Drunk Biking, 2022
Hailing from Zagreb, much of Stipan Tadić's work centers on bleary-eyed views of his current base of operations, New York City. Shades of the apocalyptic often creep into Tadić's night life scenes as encounters with not just friends, but conspiring demonic figures plucked from the medieval tradition, are recounted in a looming smoky trail of memories of the day's events in Drunk Biking. Tadić pushes this late night out further into the fantastical and widens his web of references with the periphery of video game interface elements, complete with inventory of drinks had and messages unread, to capture both the excesses and plurality of modern city living.
Sincerely,
|  | Frank Hettig Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art FrankH@HA.com (214) 409-1157
|  | Holly Sherratt Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, West Coast HollyS@HA.com (415) 548-5921
|  | Desiree Pakravan Consignment Director, Modern & Contemporary Art DesireeP@HA.com (310) 492-8621
|  | Walter Ramirez Consignment Director, Urban Art WalterR@HA.com (212) 486-3521
|  | Rebecca Lax Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples RebeccaL@HA.com (212) 486-3736
|  | Carter Adcox Cataloger, European and Modern & Contemporary Art CarterA@HA.com (214) 409-1136