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First-Ever Auction of Artworks from Artist Pension Trust

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Artist Pension Trust ® (APT), which offers long-term financial security to select artists around the world, is to offer a selection of artworks from its vast holdings at auction for the first time. A total of 34 works from the collection will be included in Sotheby’s New York and London Contemporary Curated sales in March and April. Since launching in 2004, APT has compiled the world’s largest collection of international contemporary art, comprising nearly 13,000 artworks by 2,000 artists in 75 countries. Artists who participate in the program agree to deposit 20 artworks over a 20-year-period and these deposits are then gradually sold to benefit the trust’s members. Click ahead to see highlights from the collection that will feature in the sales.

Contemporary Curated
New York | 2 March 2017

Contemporary Curated
London | 12 April 2017

First-Ever Auction of Artworks from Artist Pension Trust

  • Ivan Navarro, Victor (The Missing Monument for Washington DC or A Proposal for a Monument for Víctor Jara), 2008. Estimate $20,000–30,000. From Contemporary Curated, New York, 2 March 2017.
    Ivan Navarro is one of Chile’s best-known contemporary artists, whose politically charged neon sculptures are imbued with a mix of elaborate narrative elements and hard-edge Minimalist influences. Victor, showing a figure kneeling in an act of humility, basked in a bright light, is a poignant tribute to Victor Jara, the Chilean singer and activist who was arrested and tortured by the Pinochet regime.

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  • David Shrigley, Untitled, from the series The Guardian's Saturday Magazine, 2005. Estimate £10,000–15,000. From Contemporary Curated, London, 12 April 2017.
    Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013 and commissioned for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in September 2016, David Shrigley stands at the forefront of radical British contemporary art. His trademark imaginative cartoon-like style, blended with thought-provoking humour is brilliantly captured in the present work referencing The Guardian’s Saturday Magazine.

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  • Shezad Dawood, Menhirs II, 2010. Estimate £5,000–7,000. From Contemporary Curated, London, 12 April 2017.
    Shezad Dawood’s works range from  painting and film to sculpture and investigate the artist’s own rich cultural heritage. By juxtaposing elements of the past with the present, Dawood’s works achieve a surreal air that is accentuated by blending the abstract with the figurative. This work illustrates two menhirs (large upright standing stones found as monoliths) set against a background that is reminiscent of traditional tapestry.

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  • Michael Joo, SRS No. 8, 2008. Estimate $18,000–25,000. From Contemporary Curated, New York, 2 March 2017.
    Working in a wide range of media, from performance to film and painting, and using materials as diverse as silver nitrate, elk antlers and bamboo, Korean-American artist Michael Joo is interested in the many ways audiences can interpret his work. SRS No. 8, a minimal composition of antlers and steel, has multifaceted meanings: the antlers may refer to the strength of a stag, dominance and male sexual power, but are also a hunting trophy, perhaps symbolic of loss and death.

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  • Josh Smith, Untitled Palette Painting, 2005. Estimate $8,000–12,000. From Contemporary Curated, New York, 2 March 2017.
    Originally trained as a printmaker and having worked as Christopher Wool’s studio assistant, Josh Smith has developed a unique language over the years; one that is aware of artistic trends, but that is in constant enquiry of what it means to make art in a world that is saturated with images. Untitled Palette Painting is a superlative example of Smith’s multifaceted practice, exploring colour and texture in a thick and painterly composition.

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  • Wilhelm Sasnal, Train, 2004. Estimate £20,000–30,000. From Contemporary Curated, London, 12 April 2017.
    Drawing from disparate everyday-life sources, Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal creates paintings that fuse Romanticism with Realism and thereby scrutinise our perception of daily life. Train deliberately treads between abstraction and figuration, with the title evoking a myriad of possibilities given the almost completely abstract composition of the painting.

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  • Liam Gillick, Brazil Kalmar Text, 2006. Estimate £12,000–18,000. From Contemporary Curated, London, 12 April 2017.
    British Conceptual artist and Turner Prize nominee Liam Gillick is deeply influenced by modes of production and models of social organisation. This interest is reflected in Brazil Kalmar Text, which draws on the content of Brazilian academic papers published on the Kalmar Volvo factory in Sweden, open from 1974–1994.

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  • Bob & Roberta Smith, Jasper Johns is a Dinosaur, 2002. Estimate £1,500–2,000. From Contemporary Curated, London, 12 April 2017.
    Patrick Brill, better known under his artistic pseudonym Bob & Roberta Smith, is a British artist, activist, campaigner, author and musician, best known for his witty and provoking “slogan-art”. Here he refers to artist Jasper Johns’ importance and influence on contemporary art, while encouraging new perspectives that are able to overcome previous, now-historic positions.

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