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Executed on lush, stretched velvet in rich oils, Eggplant / car interior sees London-based interdisciplinary artist and rising star Issy Wood pushing a Surrealist syntax of the uncanny into the 21st century in her investigations of consciousness and the commodity. Described as embodying a ‘medieval millennial’ aesthetic, Wood’s paintings have a unique ability to intrigue and unsettle, thanks in part to her large-scale closely cropped compositions and innovative use of materials.i Taking the smallest everyday detail, Wood’s closely focussed and large-scale work magnifies and makes the familiar strange, detatching the innocuous car interior from its usual context and repositioning it in strange, new combinations. Suffused with humour and eroticism, Wood’s work recalls the crisp close-ups of Domenico Gnoli’s everyday objects, more recently reinvigorated in Julie Curtiss’ precise brand of Neo-Surrealism.
Domenico Gnoli, Armchair No. 2,1967, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza/Scala, Florence © Domenico Gnoli, SIAE / DACS, London 2021 Auto Erotica
Taken originally from the pages of car sales catalogues, Wood’s series of car interiors plays with the idea of the automobile as at once the image of suburban banality and of aspirational consumerism. A desirable but dangerous object, the car, as J.G. Ballad explored most famously in his 1973 novel Crash, also sits at the charged interface of violence and desire, the frisson of which is clearly communicated in the shapely, suggestive forms and richly textured surface of Eggplant / car interior.
Drawing attention to the dated vocabulary labelling cars as female objects owned by men, Wood playfully presents the gearstick and surround in unmistakably sexual terms. Emphasising its smooth curves and polished finish, Wood’s closely cropped image inverts this association, instead poking fun at the metaphoric relationship existing between cars and masculine virility. As her title suggests, detatching an object from its usual set of relations opens it up to a remarkable slipperiness, as Man Ray had explored with his assisted Readymades Homme and Femme.
'She's good at layering everyday objects with something extraordinary, making her work quite funny and also recognisable' —Michal Xufu Huang
Velvets
Meticulously painted on stretched velvet, Wood shows an especially attuned sensitivity to our relationship with materials and the tactility of objects, manipulating our expectations to wonderfully disconcerting effects. While our mind registers the smooth, cool effect of leather seats and the dull hardness of the veneered car interior, we instead stumble over the chunky, thick textures of oil on velvet, creating a visual and sensorial dissonance that is particularly affecting.
Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2021. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © DACS 2021 Like supreme Surrealist Meret Oppenheim’s famously unsettling Object, part of what gives Wood’s Eggplant / car interior its power to estrange is its tactility, and the sensory confusion we experience when looking at a familiar, everyday object made strange in this manner. Knowing teacups as we do, we can’t help but imagine touching, lifting, and drinking from this fur-lined cup, an unsettling and almost abject challenge to what we think we know of the order of things. Similarly, the proximity of the familiar object and human or animal characteristics explored by both Oppenheim and Wood generates a decidedly uncanny atmosphere, humorously posing questions about what it means to be objectified, and how value is attributed in our consumer-driven society.
'Both painting and producing music deal with layers, scrapping the parts you don’t want, and happy accidents.' —Issy Wood
Music video for Issy Wood’s ‘Fuss’, 2021
Collector’s Digest
• An established musician, Issy Wood is signed with producer Mark Ronson’s Zelig Records, with her second EP If It’s Any Constellation released earlier this year.
• Since her first major institutional show with Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in September 2018, Woods has shown her work at institutions world-wide, including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Tate St. Ives. Earlier this year she mounted a major solo exhibition at Bejing’s X Museum.
• Issy Wood has been shown at institutions worldwide, with her next big solo exhibition coming up at Beijing’s X Museum.
i Naomi Rea, ‘They’re very similar attitudes’: Artist Issy Wood on her double life as a paintings sensation and ascendent pop star’, ArtNews, 20 November 2020, online.
Provenance
Carlos∕Ishikawa, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner
6
Eggplant / car interior
signed and dated 'Issy Wood 2019' on the reverse
oil on velvet
110.2 x 150.3 cm (43 3/8 x 59 1/8 in.)
Executed in 2019.
Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £327,600
Kate Bryan
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+44 7391 402741
kbryan@phillips.com
Olivia Thornton
Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Europe
+44 20 7318 4099
othornton@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
London Auction 15 October 2021
1
Serge Attukwei Clottey
Fashion icons
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000 ‡
Sold for £340,200
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2
Flora Yukhnovich
Tondo
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ♠
Sold for £529,200
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3
Jadé Fadojutimi
Myths of Pleasure
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ♠
Sold for £1,172,000
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4
Emily Mae Smith
Invisible Woman
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000
Sold for £930,000
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5
Tunji Adeniyi-Jones
Pattern Makers
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡♠
Sold for £302,400
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6
Issy Wood
Eggplant / car interior
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £327,600
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7
Cinga Samson
Hliso Street IV
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ‡
Sold for £239,400
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8
Sanya Kantarovsky
No Eyes
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £390,600
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9
Shara Hughes
Night Picket
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £869,500
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10
Reggie Burrows Hodges
For the Greater Good
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
Sold for £441,000
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11
Milton Avery
Bird by Wild Sea
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Sold for £207,900
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12
Milton Avery
White Gull Resting
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000
Sold for £189,000
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13
Lucas Arruda
Untitled
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £352,800
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14
Marlene Dumas
The Believer
Estimate £1,600,000 - 2,400,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,656,000
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15
Titus Kaphar
Holy Absence II
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £315,000
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16
Albert Oehlen
Retrospektiv
Estimate £1,100,000 - 1,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,353,500
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17
Sigmar Polke
Negerplastik
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000 ‡
Sold for £3,047,500
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18
Günther Förg
Ohne Titel
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
Sold for £615,400
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19
André Butzer
Chips und Pepsi und Medizin (Das Glück)
Estimate £70,000 - 90,000 ‡♠
Sold for £403,200
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20
Katharina Grosse
Ohne Titel
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
Sold for £277,200
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21
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £403,200
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22
Ed Ruscha
Doric
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £441,000
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23
Yayoi Kusama
Silver Nets (EOKI)
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,500,000 ‡
Sold for £1,837,500
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24
Damien Hirst
N-(9-Acridinyl) Maleimide
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
Sold for £736,400
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25
Damien Hirst
Precious Moments
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £990,500
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26
Gilbert & George
Day
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
Sold for £453,600
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27
Chris Ofili
Triple Beam Dreamer
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,014,700
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28
Max Ernst
Pyramid Lake
Estimate £550,000 - 750,000 ‡♠
Sold for £627,500
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29
Max Ernst
Matin et soir
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £226,800
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30
Max Ernst
Homme (Spezialpreis für die Kurzfilmtage in Oberhausen)
Estimate £65,000 - 85,000 ‡♠
Sold for £151,200
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31
Max Ernst
Euklid
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £239,400
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32
Jean Fautrier
I'm falling in Love
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡♠
Sold for £760,600
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33
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Champs de Sainte-Claire
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
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34
Sean Scully
Green Yellow Figure
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £567,000
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35
George Condo
The Showgirl
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡
Sold for £1,232,500
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36
Ed Ruscha
Spots
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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37
David Hammons
Elephant Dung
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £226,800
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38
Mimmo Rotella
Il Jazz
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
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39
This lot is no longer available.
40
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Lili in Black and White
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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41
Andy Warhol
Lenin
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
Sold for £428,400
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42
Richard Prince
My Life as a Weapon
Estimate £450,000 - 650,000 ‡
Sold for £453,600
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43
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
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44
Cory Arcangel
Photoshop CS: 84 by 66 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient, "Blue, Red, Yellow" (turn reverse on), mousedown y= 1550 x=18400, mouseup y=300 x=150
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £233,100
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