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Curators' Picks: June 25 Contemporary Art Within Reach Showcase Auction
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Frank's Pick
Frank Hettig | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art
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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.
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Holly's Picks
Holly Sherratt | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, West Coast
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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).
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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.
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Desiree's Pick
Desiree Pakravan | Consignment Director, Modern & Contemporary Art
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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.
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Walter's Pick
Walter Ramirez | Consignment Director, Urban Art
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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.
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Rebecca's Pick
Rebecca Lax | Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples
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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.
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Carter's Picks
Carter Adcox | Cataloger, European and Modern & Contemporary Art
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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.
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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.
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Frank Hettig
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art
FrankH@HA.com
(214) 409-1157
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Holly Sherratt
Vice President, Modern &
Contemporary Art, West Coast
HollyS@HA.com
(415) 548-5921
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Desiree Pakravan
Consignment Director,
Modern & Contemporary Art
DesireeP@HA.com
(310) 492-8621
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Walter Ramirez
Consignment Director,
Urban Art
WalterR@HA.com
(212) 486-3521
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Rebecca Lax
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples
RebeccaL@HA.com
(212) 486-3736
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Carter Adcox
Cataloger,
European and Modern & Contemporary Art
CarterA@HA.com
(214) 409-1136
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