Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, Holiday, 2018. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Afternoon Sale.
Asuka Anastacia Ogawa
Through the use of large-scale figuration and dreamy backdrops, Asuka Anastacia Ogawa’s otherworldly compositions explore themes of childhood and play. The artist’s intuitive sense of wonder is on full display in Holiday through the spellbinding eyes of her character, situated in fields of color which contrast its skin and piercing expression, and whose evocative, defamiliarizing expression implies a lost sentiment; one that suggests an inextricable distance between viewer and subject, of the world experienced through young and adult eyes. Born in Japan, Ogawa spent her formative years in Tokyo, rural Brazil, and Sweden before completing her BFA at Central Saint Martins in London. She currently works and resides between New York and Los Angeles. Her work sits in the collections of X Museum, Beijing, as well as the Dallas Museum of Art and several other institutions around the United States.
Why Now: Ogawa exhibited her first solo show at Henry Taylor’s Los Angeles studio in 2017 and gained widespread recognition following her 2019 exhibition at Half Gallery, New York, where all of her works were sold before the show opened. Since then, she has held several shows at Blum & Poe, including Tokyo in 2020, Los Angeles in 2021, New York in 2022, and a fourth solo exhibition, pedra, which just wrapped up in Los Angeles this April.
Ambera Wellmann
Ambera Wellmann, La Pieta, 2018. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Afternoon Sale.
Ambera Wellmann’s practice recontextualizes art-historical notions of the body and its relationship to power and intimacy through continuous interchange. Often, her nomadic limbs join into a single corporeal entity, as shown in the present work, wherein two figures consolidate in ways that recall the traditional Christian Pietà , and yet the artist deliberately blurs its directness in favor of potentiality. Wellmann pivots the ideal form to a vulnerable position, allowing for the viewer to consider fresh interpretations by way of this rearrangement. Equal parts reflective and energetic, Wellmann’s work has established the Canadian-born, New York-based artist as a standout talent.
Why Now: Wellmann’s first solo show in Italy, Antipoem, is currently on view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. Her recent work has been exhibited across the globe, including group shows in Germany, Norway, Lebanon, Australia, and more, and her paintings are in the collections of ICA Miami, X Museum, Beijing, MUDAM, Luxembourg, and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
Karyn Lyons
Karyn Lyons, Hair, 2019. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Afternoon Sale.
New York-based artist Karyn Lyons brings nuanced perspective to paintings of interior life, often depicting carefully balanced scenes of quietude and emotional ferment in which her subjects – ranging from still lifes in vivid lighting, to defiant adolescents – occupy a world where appearances and desires share a common space. Her expressionistic brushstrokes poignantly showcase a given moment with rich texture, and the deconstructed nature of her work adds dimension to her subjects’ urges to be at once seen and unseen. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hair, wherein a volte-faced sitter conjures a specter out of long, untamed tresses against a dark background. Lyons’ practice has solidified around these implied scenes, and her blending of covert and candid affairs is a sharp examination of life’s essential junctures, reduced to their critical elements.
Why Now: After several noteworthy group exhibitions in 2022, including The Power to Dream at Galerie Hussenot, Paris, and Ojos De Perro Azul, at Marinaro, New York, Lyons is currently exhibiting a solo show entitled As Tears Go By at Stems, Paris. This follows recent success at auction, with many of her works achieving significant totals across Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art sales in London and Hong Kong.
Henni Alftan
Henni Alftan, Library III, 2017. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Afternoon Sale.
Henni Alftan’s focus on sensuality and narrative depth brings to the fore a memetic style which plays with ideas of image-making, art history, and fragmentation – all coalescing around seemingly tranquil scenes from daily life. The Finnish-born, Paris-based artist imbues her work with ambiguities that invite the viewer to consider how the real and the imaginary combine in representation, as seen in Library III, which, in its tightly cropped frame and plateau-like textural elements, continually shifts our attention between the observable and the speculative, as if something is being withheld from both knowledge and view. The work references Giorgio Morandi – an artist renowned for his brilliant subtlety – atop the pile; the rest of the stack is, naturally, closed. Alftan’s work is held in the collections of the Helsinki Art Museum, Finland, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, among others.
Why Now: Phillips' 20th Century & Contemporary Art Sale marks Alftan's auction debut. Following successful exhibitions at Sprüth Magers, London, in 2022, and Karma, New York, in 2020, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts graduate is currently presenting a solo show, Visitor, at Karma in Los Angeles. Alftan has also been nominated for the prestigious 2023 ARS FENNICA award, to be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, later this year.
Mario Ayala
Mario Ayala, Sunset, Haircut, 2017. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Afternoon Sale.
To Mario Ayala, California is an empire of images: murals, car detailing, tattoos, graffiti, and street culture are all on the table in his multi-disciplinary practice, and the artist refines it all through the lens of the Latino and Brown communities of his home state. Ayala embraces a collective approach to collage, creating deeply lucid works that tell stories of shared experience as a means to signify unity in a rapidly changing landscape. Sunset, Haircut typifies Ayala’s layered style with easily identifiable elements – a barber pole, hairstyle options, tattoo-style florals, and stenciled linework – which, taken as individual parts, visually read like a sketchbook of vernacular Los Angeles. Altogether, however, the work narrativizes meeting points across the cultural and artistic movements he explores. Surreal finger-scissors cut through butterfly-paper. Public image meets private thought, all under a Golden State sunset.
Why Now: Sunset, Haircut is Ayala's first work to appear at auction. The artist has gained major recognition in recent years, including exhibitions at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, in 2022, and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, in 2021. International group shows with K11 Musea, Hong Kong, Barbati Gallery, Venice, and Jeffrey Deitch in Paris have cemented Ayala as an ascending artist.
Lois Dodd
Lois Dodd, Burning House with Clapboards, 2007. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Morning Sale.
Over the course of a practice spanning half a century, American painter Lois Dodd has captured the intersections of nature and domestic life. A founding member of the legendary artist cooperative Tanager Gallery, Dodd lives and works in New York City, Mid-Coast Maine, and rural New Jersey, with each location influencing her en plain air style in distinctive ways. The artist often completes a painting in a single sitting, creating an interplay between the observable moment and its lasting impression on the canvas. Burning House with Clapboards is part of a series of house fire paintings in which Dodd manages, through an incredible mastery of pathos, a combined sense of fear and tranquility, of organic elements and manmade devastation. We see a fundamental axiom in the work: that nature persists, and it compels us to observe.
Why Now: At age 96, Dodd continues to feature in several exhibitions, including her sixth solo show at Alexandre Gallery, New York, in 2021. Currently, her first major museum retrospective in the New York Metropolitan area is on view at the newly renovated Bruce Museum, Greenwich, titled Lois Dodd: Natural Order, on view through 28 May.
Sylvia Snowden
Sylvia Snowden, Salvation, 1982. 20th Century & Contemporary Art New York, Morning Sale.
Known for her layered, textural works in which the "feel" of the paint itself takes center stage, Sylvia Snowden has been a pivotal figure in abstract painting from the latter years of the 20th century into the present day. Snowden's practice has, for decades, visualized an intense sense of identity and place, particularly among the people she encountered in her redlined Washington, D.C. neighborhood, whose Black residents the artist superbly renders with grace and dignity. Snowden embraces abstraction as a form of resilience, as visible in Salvation, with the relationship between expression, representation, and selfhood resonating with energy across every inch of canvas.
Why Now: Snowden was a highlight artist in the landmark 2017-18 National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. Since then, both critical re-examination and exhibition success have followed, including a solo show at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, in 2021 and the Rubell Museum, Miami, in 2022. Snowden is also featured in Whitechapel Art Gallery's current exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70, on view now in London through 7 May.
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Morning Session / 16 May 2023 10am EDT
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