Contemporary Evening Auction7 October 2022 • 8:45 PM HKT • Hong Kong
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otheby’s Hong Kong Autumn 2022 Contemporary Evening Auction presents a sophisticated and exciting selection of works by celebrated international names. The refined collection is led by Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild, a masterwork from 1990 belonging to the concise 725 series of just five works, two of which are currently housed in prominent institutions in Australia and Germany. Joining Richter’s monumental example of the artist’s unique mode of painterly abstraction is renowned figurative painter Peter Doig’s iconic Country-rock (wing-mirror) from 1999, one of the artist’s most recognisable and important masterworks. Featuring the rainbow tunnel off the Don Valley Parkway and the unique inclusion of a car’s wing-mirror, the painting is definitive of the artist’s cinematic visual code.
Pioneering Western artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Grotjahn, Christopher Wool, Mark Bradford and Lynne Drexler are accompanied by a distinguished selection by important Asian artists, including archetypal works by Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami and Kazuo Shiraga. Furthermore, this autumn, Sotheby’s Hong Kong is thrilled to present works by some of the most exciting and thought-provoking female artists of our generation, including Bridget Riley, Shara Hughes, Louise Bonnet, María Berrío, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Emily Mae Smith, Lucy Bull, Lauren Quin, Loie Hollowell and Dana Schutz.
Completing the outstanding line up are works by in-demand names, including Matthew Wong, Salman Toor, Trey Abdella, Hernan Bas, Tomokazu Matsuyama and KAWS, to name just a few.
Executed in 1990, Abstraktes Bild is a breathtaking masterwork of Gerhard Richter’s epic cycle of Abstraktes Bild paintings that the artist has produced since the 1980s.
Belonging to the concise 725 series of just five works, which includes examples currently housed in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (725-3) and on loan at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (725-5), this museum-quality work is a paragon of the artist’s most arresting and seductive language of abstraction.
One of Richter’s most stylistically stunning works, it measures in excess of two by two metres, thereby functioning on a monumental scale and enveloping the viewer entirely and irresistibly into its chromatic expanse.
Testament to the visual power and significance of the work, Abstraktes Bild has been exhibited internationally in notable exhibitions, including Gerhard Richter: Mirrors at Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (1991); Gerhard Richter in Dallas Collections at Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2000); Guess What? Hardcore Contemporary Art's Truly a World Treasure. Selected Works from the Yageo Foundation Collection which travelled to prominent institutions around Japan including The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2014-2015); and Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2017-2018).
這幅震撼視覺的《抽象畫》曾於多個國際重要展覽展出，包括倫敦安東尼・多菲畫廊的「格哈德・里希特︰鏡子」（1991年）、達拉斯藝術博物館的「達拉斯典藏格哈德・里希特」（2000年）、在東京國立近代美術館等日本重要博物館巡迴展出的「Guess What? Hardcore Contemporary Art’s Truly a World Treasure. Selected Works from the Yageo Foundation Collection」（2014-2015年），以及布里斯本昆士蘭現代美術館的「格哈德・里希特︰生命的影像」（2017-2018年）。
Painted in 1999, Country-rock (wing-mirror)is an iconic masterpiece by Peter Doig. Replete with mystery and intrigue, this painting is definitive of the artist’s cinematic visual code; a melding of memory with imagination, landscape with dreamscape, timelessness with the inescapably present.
Between 1998 and 2000 Doig painted three monumental works centered on a vista of the Don Valley rainbow from the highway: one of these is presently in the collection of the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev while the other was chosen as the catalogue cover illustration for the artist’s seminal retrospective at Tate Britain in 2008 and remains in a European private collection.
The present work is distinguished from the other two, however, as the only version to feature a glimpse of the car – via the intrusion of a wing-mirror in the lower left quadrant – from which our viewpoint originates.
The sale presents an impressive line up of works by important Japanese artists, including signature examples by Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami and Kazuo Shiraga. These comprise of an archetypal example of Yayoi Kusama’s white Infinity-Nets from 2006; a voluptuous Pumpkin sculpture by Kusama from 2007 measuring one metre tall and wide; a 727 painting by Takashi Murakami of which an early example from 1996 can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and two magnificent examples of Kazuo Shiraga’s performative abstractions from his most distinguished periods.
The Evening Sale highlights an outstanding selection of works by some of the most exciting and thought-provoking female artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, making up the largest ever offering of works by women in a Contemporary Evening Auction staged by Sotheby’s in Asia. These artists include in-demand names such as Lynne Drexler, Bridget Riley, Shara Hughes, Louise Bonnet, María Berrío, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Emily Mae Smith, Lucy Bull, Lauren Quin, Loie Hollowell and Dana Schutz.
A refined selection of works by historically important Western masters are presented in this Fall’s prestigious Evening Sale, including a signature work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and iconic examples of abstraction by the likes of Mark Grotjahn, Christopher Wool and Mark Bradford.
This Fall, the Evening Sale presents an exciting array of works by established and emerging talent, including Trey Abdella, Salman Toor, Hernan Bas, Matthew Wong, Tomokazu Matsuyama, and KAWS, all of whom have universal appeal that has won them dedicated collector bases around the world.
