Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Hong Kong Sales
6 - 7 October 2023
No Means No, 2006
Acrylic on canvas, 162.5 x 130.8 cm.
© Yoshitomo Nara, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$52,000,000-72,000,000/ US$6,670,000- 9,230,000
Phillips presents their Hong Kong Sales of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. The Evening Sale will take place on 6 October, and the Day Sale will take place on 7 October at the company’s new Asia Headquarters in the West Kowloon Cultural District. Featuring an exceptional group of Modern works by 20th Century Chinese masters, alongside lots by Post-War, Contemporary and Ultra-Contemporary artists, the sales represent a great depth of cross-category offerings to cater to the diversifying taste of today’s collectors. The public exhibition of the works opened on 28 September and is on view through 6 October.
Jonathan Crockett, Chairman, Asia, Phillips, said, “Our carefully assembled Hong Kong Fall Auctions of 20th Century & Contemporary Art bring some of the rarest works from each artist’s oeuvre to the fore and continue to spotlight artists from around the world who are newer to the secondary market in Asia. To ensure that Asian artists get their deserved spotlight, this season, we have increased the proportion of works by Asian artists across Evening and Day Sales. Alongside the extraordinary work by Yoshitomo Nara leading the auctions, we have outstanding works by a broad spectrum of Asian masters including Liu Ye, Zao Wou-Ki, Cai-Guo Qiang, Lee Ufan, Chu Teh-Chun, Zeng Fanzhi, Yayoi Kusama, and Park Seo-Bo. Also standing in dialogue are works by a new generation of Asian artists such as Chris Huen Sin Kan, Fang Yuan, Oh de Laval and Elaine Chiu.”
Leading Highlights from the Evening Sale
Danielle So, Head of Evening Sale, 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Phillips Hong Kong, said: “Having been crowned the most expensive living Japanese artist, works by Yoshitomo Nara continue to remain highly sought after, with his top 20 auction results having been achieved in the past four years alone. Phillips is delighted to offer another seminal work by the artist, following the strong results achieved by Lookin' for a Treasure this spring, Missing in Action in 2021, which set the second-highest auction price for his works, and Hothouse Doll in 2020. No Means No is part of a very small group of large canvases by Nara that have come to auction this year, underscoring the increasingly scarce supply of such large, full, and layered works, thus marking the present work as a rare offering.”
The collaboration between Yoshitomo Nara and the design collective graf began in 2003 when the artist met one of its founders. Together they built a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions with massive installations of wooden houses that feature drawings, paintings and sculptures by Nara across the world. The interior of these houses were inspired by the artist’s studios in Japan, somewhat nomadic homes for Nara at an important time in his artistic career. The present work was featured in their 2007 exhibition in Berlin, Yoshitomo Nara + graf: Berlin Baracke, hosted by Galerie Zink. Nara’s most ambitious collaborative project with graf was A-Z –a series of 26 exhibitions, 26 wooden structures or ‘houses’ that responded to the particular environment of the exhibition venue or the local culture were installed. No Means No formed part of the project that was shown at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2008, which marked the first show at a major public gallery in the United Kingdom for Nara + graf.
Created in Nara’s signature ‘layered’ style in which gentle swathes of pastel hide behind a translucent layer of pearly white serving as the background, the present work features an iconic Nara girl staring ahead with massive eyes twinkling like galaxies. The artist has been titling some of his pieces No Means No from as early as the 1990s, and its earliest iteration appears within a 1991 work on paper now housed in the collection of the Aomori Museum of Art, featuring a crashing warplane with the titular words blazoned in red above the scene. In this context, the title carries pacifist undertones as is typical of the anti-war artist.
Still Life with an Olive, 2012-2013
Oil on canvas, 143 x 186.5 cm.
© Nicolas Party, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$ 26,000,000 - 40,000,000/ US$ 3,330,000 - 5,130,000
Also among the Evening Sale’s highlights is Nicolas Party’s Still Life with an Olive. Shown at Party’s first major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom at the Modern Institute in Glasgow in 2013, the present work is one of only seven still life oil paintings made specially for this show, with each being created over a course of 10 to 20 months, during which Nicolas Party spends the time working and re-working his paintings, a key element that is central to the iconography of painting as a medium. Featuring a vibrant palette of yellow, red, green, and blue within a harmonious composition, it exemplifies the artist’s dexterity in colour application as well as painterly precision. Familiar fruits and objects are transformed into larger-than-life, biomorphic shapes, demonstrating Nicolas Party’s playfulness with scale.
Nicolas Party’s top ten results at auction have all been set in the past three years, which is indicative of the continuing strength of the artist’s market. Similar to the present work, two of the artist’s top five results at auction are for still life arrangements of fruit.
Contemporary Chinese Masters
The End of Baroque, 1998
Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 170 cm.
© Liu Ye, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$18,000,000 - 28,000,000/US$2,310,000-3,590,000
Among the Evening Sale highlights is Liu Ye’s monumental The End of Baroque. Its size is formidable and rare: less than 30 works of such height have come to auction, and none of this scale has been seen on the market this year. The visual lexicon of this work is undeniably rich and layered, as with the rest of Liu’s creations. Inexplicably, the view is surrealistically framed by white windows that swing out towards the vista outside. To our bottom left is a solitary figure who looks on, unperturbed by this seascape, surreal and catastrophically beautiful. Painted in 1998, a few years after the artist’s return to his native China, The End of Baroque signals the close of an era and the dawn of new beginnings.
10.05.76, 1976
Oil on canvas, 115.8 x 88.7 cm.
© Zao Wou-Ki, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$12,000,000 - 20,000,000/ US$1,540,000-2,560,000
The Evening Sale also includes a strong selection of abstract works by 20th Century Chinese masters, led by Zao Wou-Ki’s 10.05.76. Painted in 1976, the present work moves away from the signature central-axis composition of the Hurricane period and the wild, flowing style of cursive calligraphy that characterised the 1960s. In contrast to the rich colour layerings of Zao’s previous works, 10.05.76 heavily features hefty areas of earthy paint meticulously deployed with the artist’s new approach of evoking thin ink washes to achieve soft tonal gradations. In the early 1970s, Zao was advised by his friend the poet Henri Michaux to re-explore Chinese ink and paper, and to leave behind his preferred large format canvases with their vast expanses of space that demanded hours in the studio. In part to care for his increasingly bed-bound and ailing wife May (who passed away in 1972), in part due to his own inner-turmoil and desperation for a new creative outlet to distract himself.
Ye Gong Hao Long (Mr. Ye Who Loves Dragons), 2003
Gunpowder on paper, in 5 parts, overall 400 x 1500 cm.
© Cai Guo-Qiang, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$9,000,000 - 14,000,000/ US$1,150,000-1,790,000
This summer, Cai Guo-Qiang’s work was the subject of his major retrospective exhibition in Tokyo. A spectacular example of the artist’s signature methodology, Cai’s Ye Gong Hao Long (Mr Ye Who Loves Dragons) offered in this season’s Evening Sale is one of two ‘gunpowder drawings’ produced during the Explosion Project for Tate Modern in London commemorating Chinese New Year in 2003. At once conceptual, performative, and visual, Ye Gong Hao Long (Mr Ye Who Loves Dragons) features a dragon caught mid-air, its undulating silhouette formed by blotches of ash and gunpowder, and it surpasses any categorial constraints, fluctuating between ephemerality and permanence. From the 1990s onwards, dragons have become a constant motif of Cai’s, and notably, the long, winding characteristic of his gunpowder paintings and explosions recall the traditional Chinese dragons, representing auspicious symbols of strength and fortune in the East.
Auction Debut Season in Asia
A testament to the company’s reputation as the auction house for cutting-edge contemporary art, Phillips introduces several new names to the Asian market for the first time, including Ebecho Muslimova, Miriam Cahn, Robin F. Williams, Sarah Cunningham, Elaine Chiu, Honor Titus, and El Anatsui.
Leave Britney Alone, 2019
Oil on canvas, 109.2 x 152.4 cm.
© Robin F. Williams, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 2,200,000/ US$154,000-282,000
Renowned for her vividly cerebral portraits of commanding female figures, Robin F. Williams' paintings explore the complex interplay between gender and power in American visual culture. Leave Britney Alone presented in this season’s Evening Sale is based on Britney Spears’ captivating performance of 'I’m a Slave 4 U' which headlined the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
FATEBE SINKHOLE, 2020
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 152.4 x 243.8 cm.
© Ebecho Muslimova, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$250,000 - 450,000/ US$32,100-57,700
Making her first major auction debut, Ebecho Muslimova achieved recent acclaim after her solo exhibition in London and her first institutional show in New York in 2021. During her time as an undergraduate, the artist created Fatebe (Fat + Ebe [her nickname])—initially conceived as a caricature of herself to reflect the artist’s state of mind and the world around her. In her current practice, Fatebe has matured beyond a simple self-portrait and FATEBE SINKHOLE presented in the Evening Sale is a sardonic display of the female nude.
o.t., 2017
Oil on canvas, 185 x 180 cm.
© Miriam Cahn, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$1,000,000 - 2,000,000/ US$128,000-256,000
Boldly unapologetic throughout her impressive career spanning across five decades, Swiss-born artist Miriam Cahn does not shy away from the depiction of controversial imagery in her thought-provoking body of work. Taking inspiration from the world around her under the influence of the feminist movements of the 1970s and 80s, Cahn’s enigmatic figurative canvases are often set in nightmarish dreamscapes, filled with visceral depictions of violence, horror, and tragedy. o.t. offered in this season’s Evening Sale is a dazzling large-scale example of the artist’s multi-standing nude figures showcasing a powerful physical expression of violence and victimisation.
Lunar Phase, 2020
Oil on canvas, 179.8 x 130.1 cm.
© Sarah Cunningham, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$ 350,000 - 550,000/US$44,900-70,500
Born in 1993, British artist Sarah Cunningham has captured the attention of the art world, celebrated as an artistic force to be reckoned with for her gestural paintings of psychological landscapes imbued with poetic and intuitive approaches. Arresting in its stylistic virtuosity, Lunar Phase offered in the Day Sale is a prime example Cunningham’s semi-abstract landscapes composed of richly vibrant colours and expressive swirls of paint.
A Wonderful World, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 115 x 145 cm.
© Elaine Chiu, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$40,000 - 60,000/ US$5,100-7,700
This season’s Day Sale marks Hong Kong artist Elaine Chiu’s international auction debut, with a brilliantly vibrant painting A Wonderful World created for the sale. At just 27 years old, she has already cemented an impressive reputation as one of the city’s most exciting young talents, with her impactful work earning her a coveted spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia list for 2023 in the arts category.
Tom Hanks at Lassens, 2019
Oil on canvas, 218 x 180 cm.
© Honor Titus, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$300,000 - 450,000/ US$38,500-57,700
Also marking his auction debut in Asia in this season’s Day Sale is Honor Titus, a self-taught American artist whose paintings often depict faceless figures in minimal urban landscapes, reflecting the sense of isolation and loneliness that results from a condition of anonymity in the urban environment.
Diaspora, 2012
Archival dyes printed on cotton, hand stitched, 135 x 135 cm.
© El Anatsui, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$200,000 - 300,000/ US$25,600-38,500
Regarded as one of the most significant living African artists working on the continent, the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, 2015. A wonderful editioned example of the Anatsui’s bottle cap tapestries, which the artist has devoted his artistic practice to since the late 1990s, Diaspora offered in this season’s Day Sale captures Anatsui’s signature wide, shimmering curtains in compact form.
Other Highlights from the Day Sale
Landscape, 2005
Oil on canvas, 145 x 223 cm.
© Zeng Fanzhi, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$2,500,000 - 3,500,000/ US$321,000-449,000
A Field of Phantom, 1995
Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 23 cm.
© Yayoi Kusama, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000/ US$256,000-385,000
Ecriture No.110507, 2011
Mixed media and Korean paper on canvas, 169 x 230.5 cm.
© Park Seo-Bo, courtesy of Phillips
Estimate: HK$1,800,000 - 2,800,000/ US$231,000-359,000
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