“If I had to find one overarching theme, it would probably be how terrifying desire is.”
— Issy WoodThe London-based American artist Issy Wood has proactively wielded an oeuvre that interweaves painting, music, and writing to explore the theme of desire. To the artist, its intricate mechanism and terrifying aftermath within the consumerist context have been one of the cruxes of our perverting society. Adopting a stance as a ‘Medieval Millennial,’ Wood has combined a touch of classical solemnity with an attitude of contemporary cynicism, through which she develops a highly stylised mannerism of the uncanny to approach the complex floods of desire hidden in everyday banality.i
Created in 2020, the present lot Unsprung exemplifies how Wood has nuancedly exerted painting to manipulate our distance to material allure. The painting presents an adorable vignette depicting two small smiling lamb figurines resting against the gleaming black leather seat in an automobile. The title ‘unsprung’—literally meaning released from springs and used to describe the relaxed status of the leather seats—at once suggests that it is a quiet domestic moment. Tension is rife in the composition as Wood dramatically enlarges this intimate scene to fully cover a vast canvas spanning nearly 1.5 meters—to an extent that our affection becomes the source of the estranged and unfamiliar.
A closer look at Unsprung reveals the rich texture and surface, their contents and tonalities, which are intentionally countered and reduced as Wood adds further a layer of opacity and obscurity. Twisting between an obsession with materiality and a subsequent detachment from objectivity, Wood draws upon a vast Surrealist lexicon to examine the distorted façade of the real charged with hidden desires in our subconscious terrain. In her own words, Wood has put it, ‘I'm convinced the way I configure these otherwise alluring products and garments often lowers them, literally, in tone, or happily switches them from being an advert to an expression of perversion, in the way painting can do.’ In creating a ghostly understatement of the painted objects, Wood also probes into a pictorial vein evoking the genre tradition of vanitas in 17th-century Flemish painting, which explored representations of material abundance to reveal the transience of life and the essential vanity.
Edwaert Collier, Vanitas Still Life, 1662
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1871, 71.19That Wood extracts these motifs of rarities largely from auction catalogues draws upon a broader visual history of fetishism. The exquisite items and expensive tokens are objectified forms that secure the intangible desire and power through the means of physical property accumulation. In line with this critical inquiry, Woods further investigates a particular form of possession as expressed through our domestication of animals in Unsprung. Wood views these figurines as reduced replicas of animality in materialised and industrialised forms. They not only serve as testaments to human detachment from nature but also constitute another expression of human domination and deprivation over wilderness. The adorable presence of the little lambs solicits intense emotional engagements, which ironically denotes the uncontrollable inflation of desire within our anthropocentric society.
“We have domesticated animals to the point of tchotchkes-status… The tureens say: can you handle seeing the animal you are eating?”
— Issy WoodUltimately, taking on a feminist position, Wood imbricates in these paintings layers of subtext that point to questions of gender. As Wood asks, ‘There is always a question about whether opting into these things is empowering or ceding to some toxic precedent. A lot of time I ask myself, “Do I want this? Do I want this coat, these nails, this set of porcelain, a man with this expensive car? What the hell did I inherit? What are my duties?”’ii With these questions, Wood has most recently presented her solo exhibition Study For No at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, from 18 Oct 2023 to 07 Jan 2024, which she boldly looks into gestures of refusal to order and systems of oppression. Negotiating with the deeper internal allure of material possession and domination, Unsprung thus belongs to a fundamental series that would constitute Wood’s ongoing critical studies, in which she delves deeper into the subject of desire as a form of gendered discipline.
i Issy Wood, quoted in Artsy artist page, online.
ii Issy Wood, quoted in Clara Eugène, “Issy Wood: Study for No @ Lafayette Anticipations,” MADE IN BED, December 2023, online.
Condition Report
Description
View our Conditions of Sale.
Provenance
Carlos/Ishikawa, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2020
26
Unsprung
signed and dated 'Issy Wood 2020' on the reverse
oil on linen
140 x 101 cm. (55 1/8 x 39 3/4 in.)
Painted in 2020.
Estimate
HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
€92,500-139,000
$103,000-154,000
Kimberley Wong
Associate Specialist
20th Century & Contemporary Art, Hong Kong
+852 2318 2095
kimberleywong@phillips.com
New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art
Hong Kong Auction 4 October 2024