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Walter's Picks
Walter Ramirez | Senior Consignment Director, Urban Art, New York
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Zevs is a French artist who rose
out of Paris's 1990s street-art scene and became known for his "liquidation"
paintings, where familiar logos and symbols appear to melt, their power
dripping away. Using this signature style, he turns the branding language against
itself, exposing how fragile and temporary our shiny emblems of consumer
culture are. In his 2012 diptych The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back, Zevs brings that idea into sharper focus. One canvas
features the Louis Vuitton logo in Takashi Murakami's playful multicolor style,
while the other riffs on Damien Hirst's signature dot paintings. Side by side,
they represent two poles of luxury fashion and contemporary art, both polished,
loaded with market value, and perhaps on the verge of collapse. The title
suggests a breaking point, when too much weight, image, and hype finally make
the whole system buckle. With its glossy varnish and slick surfaces, the piece
feels seductive yet uneasy, a reminder that everything can still fall apart
beneath all that glamour.
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The KAWS 12 Pieces Bronze Set combines a dozen of KAWS's
most recognizable figures, reimagined in small but weighty bronze form. Each
sculpture, about seven inches tall, captures the artist's signature mix of
cartoon nostalgia and contemporary polish, from characters like BFF and Passing
Through to other familiar poses seen throughout his career. Cast in an edition
of 250, the bronzes have a quiet, collectible energy, balancing playfulness
with the seriousness of fine art materials. Together, the set feels like a
snapshot of KAWS's evolving world: pop culture turned timeless through
craftsmanship. It's both intimate and iconic, a blend of toy-like charm and
sculptural presence that perfectly reflects the artist's ability to bridge
worlds between street art, design, and high art.
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Taylor's Picks
Taylor Curry | Director, Modern & Contemporary Art, New York
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I've always admired how Mr. StarCity
can say so much with so little, and Let Us Refuse
really shows that. It has this calm, open energy at first, but the longer you
look, the more it draws you in. There's a quiet tension between the soft blue
sky and the figure's bold, graphic presence, and even the black balloons echo
the head's shape, giving the whole piece a rhythm that feels deliberate but
effortless. This is our first time offering a work by Mr. StarCity
at auction, which makes it especially exciting to share.
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KAWS' COMPANION has become one of the most recognizable
figures in contemporary art, and the 4-foot version really shows why. At this
scale, it has a presence that's both commanding and human. The figure's slumped
posture and gloved hands covering its face capture that mix of vulnerability
and pop-culture cool that defines KAWS' work. What I like about this piece is
how approachable it feels playful on the surface, but with an emotional weight
that's impossible
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Desiree's Picks
Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples, Beverly Hills
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I really love Haroshi's GUZO (White Marble) because
marks the Japanese artist's refined shift from his signature recycled
skateboard-wood works into the realm of fine marble sculpture. With his
hallmark playful figurative character "Guzo," Haroshi retains his pop-culture roots but elevates them
into the luxury-material domain, allowing the veined, pristine white stone to
lend both elegance and gravitas. The contrast between the artist's dynamic,
almost toy-like form and the timeless solidity of marble creates a work that
bridges contemporary and classical, collectible and conceptual.
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Banksy's Donuts (Strawberry) is a satirical
and vividly iconic screenprint that exemplifies the artist's sharp critique of
consumer culture and authority. Created in 2009 in an edition of 299, the work
depicts a pink-frosted police van being escorted by motorcycle officers, an
absurd juxtaposition that turns a symbol of control into a sugary spectacle.
The piece merges humor and tension, embodying Banksy's talent for transforming
familiar imagery into biting social commentary. With its bright palette and
subversive wit, Donuts (Strawberry) captures the tension
between indulgence and power that defines much of Banksy's most celebrated
work.
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Hava's Picks
Hava Toobian | Associate Specialist & Lead Cataloger, Urban Art
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Nigel Howlett's Pet Magazine (2018) is a cool, editorial
slice of his signature drama: stylized, monochrome, and psychologically
charged. At nearly four feet tall in acrylic on canvas, it snaps like a cover
line yet keeps its subject just out of reach, a tactic he uses to probe
performed identity and the uneasy theater of seeing and being seen. The title
winks at print gloss and the pet as possession. The image tests where display
meets care and control. Howlett (b. 1979) is a London-based painter known for
stark portraits of anonymous, futuristic figures, faces pared to sleek,
mask-like forms with emotion routed into charged, theatrical poses. His
language is minimal, a little uncanny, and rooted in the surreal. That mood is
informed by transhumanism, the idea that humans can use science and technology
to push past biological limits, sharpen cognition, re-engineer bodies, extend
healthy lifespan, even tinker with identity, which in art often appears as
engineered surfaces and figures that sit just beyond the human, cool and
polished, blurring person and product. The result here is a crisp, contemporary
object with quiet bite, an image that hums at low temperature and holds tension
in suspension.
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Ryan Travis Christian's Untitled (2011) is
a concentrated hit of his black-and-white world. The small format heightens the
pressure of every mark, turning the fuzz and smudge into a nervous thrum. He
swings from velvety blacks to gauzy midtones and uses that range to twist the
idioms of early cartoons. Two cartoon-eyed critters churn through bedding
beneath a cage grid, a suburban tableau that starts as a gag and slowly tilts
toward menace. The lineage reads as vintage animation filtered through
Chicago-Imagist grit, but the tone is unmistakably his. Christian has built a
practice on that tension between deadpan humor and exacting draftsmanship. This
drawing condenses that approach into crisp shorthand. You see dense value
control, jittery patterning, and a knowingly anachronistic, handmade
sensibility.
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Walter Ramirez
Senior Consignment Director,
Urban Art, New York
WalterR@HA.com
(212) 486-3521
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Taylor Curry
Director,
Modern & Contemporary Art,
New York
TaylorC@HA.com
(212) 486-3503
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Desiree Pakravan
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples,
Beverly Hills
DesireeP@HA.com
(310) 492-8621
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Hava Toobian
Associate Specialist &
Lead Cataloger,
Urban Art
HavaT@HA.com
(214) 409-1491
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