“[McArthur Binion’s paintings are] deeper than autobiography... [his] formal mastery, his ability to wring so many possibilities out of his direct and straightforward labor, permeates the works with layers of meaning, beginning with his challenge to the idea that art could be objective and pure, that it could exist in a separate aesthetic realm untainted by life.”
—John YauFrom a distance, McArthur Binion’s DNA: Sepia: IX, 2016, appears as a configuration of grid-like forms, loosely in the tradition of the monochromatic compositions of artists such as Jasper Johns and Agnes Martin. Upon closer inspection, however, the work reveals a multi-faceted network of personal history, what Binion has come to call autobiographical abstraction. Created one year prior to his inclusion in the Venice Biennale, DNA: Sepia: IX draws from the artist’s early career as a writer, containing layers of meaning designed to be read or uncovered rather than merely observed. Beneath the latticed surface, Binion weaves a rich tapestry of his ‘under-conscious,’ consisting of archival matter including personal phone books, family photographs and copies of his birth certificate, as well as found records from charged moments in Black history.
Detail of the present work. “For me, the most challenging thing I could do was work to find some humanity within abstraction… the goal, for me, was to make abstraction personal.”
—McArthur BinionDNA: Sepia: IX belongs to Binion's long-term DNA series, which encompasses over 250 pieces created between 2013 and 2020. The title of the series nods to the small pieces of personal and personally resonant ephemera that form the backbone of his work, oblique references that form a distinct, individual grammar. Binion also posits other possibilities for the acronym, playfully offering “Distinct Neurological Advancement” and “Detroit Negro Artist.” Aptly, Lowery Stokes Sims describes Binion’s works as "notions of self-awareness and self-discovery, a conscious reflection on himself and to the historical discourse he has contributed to.”i
i Lowery Stokes Sims, quoted in McArthur Binion: Re:Mine, exh. cat., Galerie Lelong, New York, 2015.
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拍品詳情
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來源
Lehmann Maupin, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner藝術家簡介
McArthur Binion
American • 1946
In his 40 year career, McArthur Binion has forged a unique path as an artist. Though emerging in the New York art world of the 1970s alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, Dan Flavin, Brice Marden, and Gordon Matta-Clark, Binion has only very recently been garnering significant attention. After years of deliberately keeping a relatively low profile, Binion, now aged 72 and living in Chicago, is now in the limelight with a career that ever since his prominent inclusion in the 2017 Venice Biennale is on a steady rise.
Binion is known for his nuanced abstract paintings that eschew brushes and paint. The process of grinding and then rubbing oilstick into wood and aluminum panels produces abstract subjects that are often mono- or duo-chromatic. He had to train himself to be ambidextrous to negotiate hand fatigue, and works an entire surface of a painting in one sitting, before returning to rework that surface the next day or week or month – with some works even taking years to complete. Binion, who often also incorporates photocopied biographical documents into his works, places personal memory in dialogue with the language of abstraction, specifically action painting, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, as well as stylistic tropes common to folk artists, such as quilt patterns.
Though Binion received offers to exhibit his work in the 1970s, he deliberately chose against it. As Binion explained in a 2016 Artspace interview with Loney Abrams: “It was a choice because it was, and still is, very important to me that my work is seen in a certain way…I was invited everywhere, and I was a part of the scene, but I didn’t want to be the only black person out there… I knew my work wouldn’t have been seen the way I wanted it to be seen. Back then, people were describing me as a Minimalist artist, and for me, my work had much more emotional content.” Nowadays, a somewhat different misinterpretation continues to linger.
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DNA: Sepia: IX
signed, titled and dated "DNA: Sepia IX McArthur Binion 2016" on the reverse
oil paintstick, sepia ink and paper on board
96 x 72 x 2 in. (243.8 x 182.9 x 5.1 cm)
Executed in 2016.
估價
$120,000 - 180,000
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現代及當代藝術
紐約拍賣 2024年7月17日
