Rodney Graham - 20th C. & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session New York Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    303 Gallery, New York
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Rodney Graham, October 5, 2006 - January 7, 2007, p. 95 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 57)
    Hauser & Wirth Zürich, Rodney Graham. Renaissance Man. Works 1400 - 1977, October 21 - December 20, 2006 (another example exhibited)
    Kunsthall Bergen, Rodney Graham, November 10 - December 21, 2006 (another example exhibited)
    Villa Merkel, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen am Neckar; Kunstmuseum Sankt Gallen, Brave Lonesome Cowboy, April 15, 2007 - January 27, 2008, pp. 14, 26, 206 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 247)
    CAC Málaga, Rodney Graham. A Glass of Beer, April 21 - June 15, 2008, pp. 14, 16-17, 19, 59, 86, 88-89, 92 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 56-57)
    Paris, Jeu de Paume, Harun Farocki | Rodney Graham, April 7 - June 7, 2009, p. 203 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 131)
    London, Lisson Gallery, Rodney Graham: Painter, Poet, Lighthouse Keeper, June 23 - July 31, 2010 (another example exhibited)
    Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda, Rodney Graham: Lightboxes, July 8 - November 26, 2017, p. 124 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 28-29)
    Reno, Nevada Museum of Art; Anchorage Museum; Palm Springs Art Museum, Unsettled, August 26, 2017 – February 18, 2019, p. 220 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 85)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “I mainly use [mise en abyme] for comic effects in pieces like Paradoxical Western Scene (2006), which is a pastiche of two record album covers, one by Marty Robbins and the other by Peter Sellers. I have been influenced a lot by album covers..." Rodney Graham

  • Artist Biography

    Rodney Graham

    Canadian • 1949

    Rodney Graham pulls from cultural and intellectual history through photography, film, music, performance and painting. He presents narratives with puns and references to literature and philosophy, including Sigmund Freud and Kurt Cobain, with a sense of humor that contradicts his residence in the post-punk scene of late 1970s Vancouver.

    In his film trilogy Vexation Island (1999), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999) and City Self/Country Self (2001), the artist plays characters like a castaway and a cowboy caught in repetitive cycles of actions and gestures. Such unconscious dream states are further explored in Graham's series of upside-down photographs of oak trees, which are hung to mimic camera obscura.

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Paradoxical Western Scene

painted aluminum lightbox with transmounted chromogenic transparency
58 1/8 x 48 3/4 x 7 in. (147.6 x 123.8 x 17.8 cm.)
Executed in 2006, this work is number 4 from an edition of 5 plus 1 artist's proof.

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $56,250

Contact Specialist
Rebekah Bowling
Head of Day Sale, Afternoon Session
New York
+ 1 212 940 1250

20th C. & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

New York Auction 13 November 2019