Kon Trubkovich, Dance before my mirror 2, 2024. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
With the Supreme Court’s catastrophic 2022 decision, reproductive health care services — including access to legal abortion — are now under attack in the United States. By organizing benefit events and campaigns, NOISE FOR NOW provides opportunities for artists and entertainers to use their talents to raise money and communicate to the world that reproductive rights are human rights.
In the upcoming New Now sale in New York, Phillips and NOISE FOR NOW come together to offer a selection of seven lots in support of this crucial cause. 90% of the proceeds from this selection will be donated to NOISE FOR NOW and redistributed to the Abortion Care Network’s Keep Our Clinics fund and to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Artists Cindy Sherman, Marilyn Minter, Justin Williams, Alejandra Moros, Kon Trubkovich, and Francesca DiMattio have donated works directly to the cause. An incredible work by Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers) is also included in the selection. From established artists like Sherman and Minter — whose works resonate increasingly strongly in our post-#MeToo, post-Roe environment — to a younger generation of trailblazing artists who have experienced the recent political tensions as they come of age, the selection offers collectors of all levels and interests the opportunity to not only own significant and important work, but to make a difference. Phillips is proud to partner with NOISE FOR NOW and these artists in support of this vision.
Here, discover the works on offer for this urgent cause.
Phillips’ New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art auction takes place at 432 Park Avenue on 25 September. The preview exhibition is open from 16 September until the auction.
Learn more about NOISE FOR NOW >
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 1993/2023. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Artist Cindy Sherman has never been one to shy away from addressing the complex issues facing women today. Many of her works remind viewers of the imbalance between the cultural idolization of women’s beauty and the continued silencing of women whenever they assert their rights. Sherman was one of nearly 40 artists who contributed work to the groundbreaking 2020 exhibition Abortion is Normal at Presenhuber Galerie in New York. The scope of the exhibition emerged from the May 2019 abortion ban in Alabama and raised awareness and funds for women’s reproductive rights. The work on offer here began as an option for a fashion series in the early ‘90s but was later recast with desaturated colors reminiscent of silent film stills, leaving viewers with an ambiguous sensation of time. In a sense, we cannot tell if this image is contemporary or historic, a timely meditation on the myth of linear progress.
Marilyn Minter
Marilyn Minter, Cuntrol, 2020. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Marilyn Minter’s Cuntrol was included in the 2020 exhibition Abortion is Normal at Presenhuber Galerie in New York. In an interview with Arsenal Contemporary Art ahead of the exhibition, Marilyn Minter was prescient about the urgency of the issues at hand, remarking, “What will a 16-year-old kid do in Texas when she has to travel out of state to get an abortion? What’s the nearest state? I fought for this in ’73 when I was a kid, I didn’t think this day would come again. I don’t think people in your age group realize how close we are to losing Roe vs. Wade.” On Cuntrol, she went on to note, “I didn’t want to put in something easy, it’s just not that kind of show […] I’m making a tough piece; it’s a powerful piece for me. I think that if you’re not angry and upset, you’re not paying attention right now.”
Justin Williams
Justin Williams, Walking scorpion, John played guitar to no one, 2024. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Justin Williams’ figurative works are contemplative depictions of community, resettlement, and modes of living. With glowing contrasts between thin washes of murky and bright oil paint, Williams explores his personal history, ranging from his grandparents’ migration from Egypt to Australia and his personal conception of “the idea of outsider culture.” Williams lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has gained global renown, with solo exhibitions in Paris, Taipei, and Los Angeles in 2024 alone.
Francesca DiMattio
Francesca DiMattio, Sevres Mint Bench, 2022. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Exploring the history of craft, decorative arts, and interior design with a feminist lens, Francesca DiMattio confronts materialistic impulses in sculptures and paintings that are as striking as they are peculiar. She’s explained, “My materials reference things that are desired, but the making of each work necessitates a kind of crumbling or breaking down of the structure of that desire.” DiMattio holds a BFA from Cooper Union and an MFA from Columbia and has enjoyed rising success, with recent solo exhibitions at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London, Nina Johnson in Miami, Florida, and group exhibitions at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA) and Kasmin, New York.
Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers)
Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers), The Fire Witch, 2008. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Rashid, also known as Frohawk Two Feathers, creates works that employ text, graphic illustration, painting, and sculpture to explore alternative historical narratives. In works that fold our sense of time and place in on itself, the artist challenges us to confront historical injustices head-on — a challenge that feels strikingly relevant to the cause supported by the sale of these works. Born in 1976 in Chicago, Rashid’s work has appeared in group shows at François Ghebaly Gallery and Jeffrey Deitch and sits in several museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Hudson Rover Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among many others.
Alejandra Moros
Alejandra Moros, Abrazo, 2024. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
24-year-old artist Alejandra Moros lives and works in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her works explore themes of curiosity, transformation, and evolution, seen clearly in the twisting fleshy forms and the play of light and shadow in this 2024 work. Her solo exhibitions include Tip of the Tongue, Bridge of the Nose at Spinello Projects in Miami and Pierce, Push, Pull, Press at GARTEN Gallery in Como, Italy.
Kon Trubkovich
Kon Trubkovich, Dance before my mirror 2, 2024. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art.
Born in Moscow in 1979 before emigrating to the United States as the USSR collapsed, Kon Trubkovich explores the degradation of personal and collective memories with visual references to recently built but already failing technologies. The artist’s visual exploration of historical injustices imposed on people by their government resonates strongly within this selection, highlighted by this haunting, large-scale portrait of a woman. Her face is subversively adorned with daisies — typically seen to signify ladylike themes of purity, childbirth, and cheerfulness. The work’s visual representation of digital malfunction seems to imply that our memory of its subject is in the process of erasure. Trubkovich has exhibited widely, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, among many others.
About NOISE FOR NOW:
Established in 2017, NOISE FOR NOW raises money and awareness for local organizations throughout the United States that work to provide and protect Reproductive Healthcare, including abortion. NOISE FOR NOW has worked with over 450 artists, musicians, and entertainers to raise $1.3 million for 48 partner organizations. Past auction contributors include Marcel Dzama, Shepard Fairey, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Swoon, and Lesley Vance.
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