Bonhams and Hypeart Kicked off an Eventful LA Art Week With a Collaborative Auction
Made to commemorate the auctioneer’s revamped gallery, ‘Instruments for a Memory Device’ featured work from Andy Warhol, Banksy, Yoko Ono and more.
Last week, Hypeart had the honor to partner with the esteemed auction house Bonhams to celebrate the opening of its revamped gallery space in Los Angeles. Coinciding with all of the Art Week happenings across the city, Hypeart curated a selection of Bonhams auction to reflect the ways in which art has been used as a gateway back into nostalgia.
Presented in collaboration with Dobel, creator of the world’s first Cristalino, Instruments for a Memory Device comprised of paintings, sculptures and works on paper, each separated by time period and subject matter, but united along the thread of personal and shared histories. Towering against the wall was a largely bare painting by American artist Sam Francis entitled Untitled (SFP68-58), which features a slender border painted in washy hits of color that tapers against the upper corners of the canvas. Central to Francis’ practice was an emphasis on light and color, as he’d soak the surfaces of his canvas with a drippy technique that was an equal spotlight on the areas left void, as it is on the psychedelic pools of color.
Anchored to Tommie Smith’s protest during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino‘s Study for 19.83 #2 and Study for 19.83 #3 challenges the viewer to reflect on collective action, as it pertains to pivotal moments within history, and how overtime, they come to form social paradigms.
Additional standouts include two basketball-inspired sculptures by Berlin duo, Elmgreen & Dragset, one of which is shown without the hoop. Entitled Lowered Goals (2012), the German artists play with the power of reduction to see how simply removing one element of an object can conjure an entirely different set of associations. Perched atop a plinth just a few feet away was Cleaning Piece (1966/1988) by Yoko Ono, inspired by the Japanese singer and artist’s “Action Poems” that encouraged viewers to reflect on visual and sensory experiences found in nature, as well as in domestic life.
Bonhams and Hypeart kicked off what was an eventful art week in LA, which included a number of unique pieces by Andy Warhol, Banksy, Robert Longo, Zhang Huan, Ernie Barnes and Nancy Spero, amongst many others. See the full auction results here.
