Jonas Wood - 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale in Association with Poly Auction Hong Kong Sunday, June 6, 2021 | Phillips
  • “Of all the possible things I could paint, the thing that interests me is something that I can get close enough to in order to paint it honestly.” Jonas Wood 

    One of the most iconic and recognisable artists of our generation, Los Angeles-based contemporary painter Jonas Wood draws upon a ‘visual diary’ of the everyday, creating rich and densely-composed landscapes, still lifes and interiors that elevate the mundane to the extraordinary. Stressing the importance of painting for himself rather than for an audience, Wood’s paintings fuse bright Fauvist colours and offbeat Japanese ukiyo-e-esque compositions with an array of Pop culture references. 

     

    One particular innovation in Wood’s practice is the use of images mediated through other media, a playful twist seen in his first sport paintings, based on portraits of athletes sourced from the cards Wood collected as a child. Paul Gibson is based on a collectable baseball card of Paul Marshall Gibson, Jr. a American former professional baseball pitcher who played for the Detroit Tigers between 1988 and 1992. Wood’s love of portraiture drew him to sports cards, whose bold typography and abstract backgrounds dovetailed perfectly with his brand of off-kilter realism. Rigorously structured to play with our perception of depth, Paul Gibson corroborates Wood’s indebtedness to Paul Cézanne’s deconstruction of pictorial space and the fracturing of forms that manifested in the avant-garde Cubist realities of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. 

     

    Having initially studied psychology before focusing on fine art, Wood’s unique interweaving of aesthetics and memory reflect a postmodern reality fed by digital technology and oversaturated visual culture. Wood’s whimsical choice of subject and sharp graphic flair reconciles the abstract, representational, photographic and televised, marking him as a postmodern commentator in the mould of masters such as Andy Warhol and David Hockney. 

     

    Paul Gibson baseball card
    1990 Paul Gibson Baseball Card, Detroit Tigers

     

    • Provenance

      Anton Kern Gallery, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

Property from a Prominent Private Collection

191

Paul Gibson

signed, dated and titled 'JBRW 2008 "PAUL GIBSON" JONAS WOOD' on the reverse
oil on canvas
101.6 x 76.2 cm. (40 x 30 in.)
Painted in 2008.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
HK$1,000,000 - 2,000,000 
€106,000-212,000
$128,000-256,000

Sold for HK$1,134,000

Contact Specialist

Danielle So
Associate Specialist, Head of Day Sale
DanielleSo@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale in Association with Poly Auction

Hong Kong Auction 7 June 2021