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Liu Wei (劉韡): “Sandwiches No. 13” (oil on canvas, 2015)

Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu Wei (劉韡) graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou in 1996.

Manhattan-, Hong Kong-, and Seoul-based gallery Lehmann Maupin describes 劉韡‘s work:

Liu Wei “explores 21st century socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of contemporary society and the transformation of developing cities and the urban landscape.

“In many of his sculptural and installation works, he uses found materials that are re-contextualized to draw new meanings out of the materials from which they are made.”

Liu Wei’s works are exhibited and collected globally. Institutional and private collectors include Seoul’s Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art; the M+ in Hong Kong, and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.

Examine Liu Wei’s entire œuvre. This work documents an eye and sense for the universal appeal of line, color, and composition.

Lehmann Maupin is highlighting Liu Wei’s work during this week’s Art Basel.

Look for the extraordinary “Library V-II” (books, wood, and iron) of 2015-2018.

See: Liu Wei, Lehmann Maupin

#art #artmarket #arthistory #liuwei #beijing #hangzhou #lehmannmaupin #newyork #miami #london #berlin #zurich #vienna #oslo #milan #dubai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #collection #portfolio #tangibleasset #collector #leeumsamsungmuseumofart #leeumsamsung #M+ #rubellcollection #architecture #design #interiordesign #fashion #urban #urbanliving #modernization #luxury #line #color #abstraction #realestatedevelopment

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Gutai masterpiece ・ Sadamasa Motonaga’s “Work 145” of 1964

Art Basel opens in Switzerland next week.

London-based Alexandre Carel, former Christie’s Paris wunderkind, Stanford MBA, summer intern in real estate at New York-based, global investment firm KKR (Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts; KKR manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit and, through its strategic partners, hedge funds),

and Paris-based gallery Natalie Seroussi are collaborating to curate a booth

exploring post-war Asian and European abstraction.

Carel and Seroussi’s catalogue “Lands of Abstraction,” prepared for their Art Basel joint exhibition, explores abstract movements that arose almost simultaneously in Asia, Europe, and the United States – all of which “matured in parallel to one another.”

Among the many masterpieces on view will be Sadamasa Motonaga’s almost nine-foot “Work 145” of 1964. Asking price: $5 million.

Sadamasa Motonaga (元永 定正, 1922-2011) was a founding member of Japan’s Gutai Art Association (1954-1972).

His “Work 145” of 1964, last shown in New York at the Guggenheim Museum during the 2013 exhibition “Gutai: Splendid Playground,” reflects Gutai’s deep connection to nature, the process of art making, and life-affirming rationale

Carel and Seroussi write:

“Literally translated as ‘concreteness,’ Gutai’s intention was to impart life to matter and reach pure creativity.

“To artists such as Sadamasa Motonaga …, this goal could only be attained by way of a deep connection between the artist’s hand and his spirit.”

See:

  1. “Massive Motonaga Stars at Carel & Seroussi Booth at Art Basel,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 5 June 2018;
  2. 2) “Lands of Abstraction,” Natalie Seroussi Galerie, Paris & Alexandre Carel, London, Art Basel Highlights, June 2018

 

 

#art #arthistory #artmarket #artbasel #gutai #guggenheim #guggenheimmuseum #postwarabstraction #abstraction #japan #natalieseroussi #alexandrecarel #stanford #stanforduniversity #mba #collection #portfolio #collectionsdevelopment #environmentalcollectionsmanagement #co2 #nature #basel #newyork #london #paris #zurich #milan #dubai #hongkong #tokyo #seoul #asia #europe #tech #luxury #design #realestatedevelopment #entrepreneur #investments #investor #privateequity #energy #infrastructure #realestate #credit #hedgefunds

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Christopher Wool: “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001, detail)

Detail of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001).

J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the Blackstone Group who manages its hedge fund business, is the first American private collector to display his works of contemporary art in Asia.

“Christopher Wool: Highlights from the Hill Art Collection” opened during Art Basel Hong Kong in Central District’s H Queens, the new skyscraper designed by William Lim’s Hong Kong-based CL3 architectural practice and custom-built to house art galleries.

The exhibition, on view from March 27 through April 8, was produced by Hong Kong-based advisor Alexandre Errera.

While Mr. Hill ordinarily does not attend art fairs (dealers call him with works of interest instead), he did make it to Art Basel Hong Kong this spring for the opening of his exhibition of the works of Christoper Hill.

Following Hong Kong, Mr. Hill and his daughter left for Beijing to visit the studios of the about 15 artists there whose works he collects. Mr. Hill collects, for instance, works of Liu Wei. (See my post of yesterday regarding Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” of 2008).

Asked about the attraction of Chinese art now, Mr. Hill observes:

“Let’s go back to the different collections that we have,

“which is Renaissance bronzes, old master paintings, a dozen post-World War II artists, and now emerging artists.

“They all have one thing in common: At the moment that the art was created, the country of origin was going through a massive series of changes.

“China, in my mind, is going through the same thing now.

“And so I said, ‘I want to be educated.'”

 

See: 1) “J. Tomilson Hill on the Attraction of Contemporary Art,” Ted Lois, The New York Times, 26 March 2018; 2) “J. Tomilson Hill is Giving Asia Its First Christopher Wool Show in Over a Decade,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 27 March 2018

 

#christopherwool #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #jtomilsonhill #collection #portfolio #collectionsmanagement #alexandreerrera #artadvisory #blackstone #blackstonegroup #finance #hedgefund #hongkong #beijing #seoul #tokyo #newyork #london #paris #berlin #vienna #zurich #oslo #dubai #luxury #realestatedevelopment #architecture #design

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Liu Wei: “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008)

Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008).

Liu Wei regenerates various segments of Beijing’s high-rise buildings into digitalized geometric structures of bright hues of pinks, yellows, blues, and greens.

The image was rendered digitally on a computer and then painted onto a larger canvas.

While modern and “digital,” Liu Wei connects with, while seeking to re-explore, more traditional landscape painting. Note the moon and the pine tree, traditional motifs.

Liu Wei, born in Beijing in 1972, is one of China’s leading contemporary artists. He lives and works in Beijing and is represented by Lehmann Maupin.

Rather than “subversively reference politics,” he often looks for inspiration in found objects and architectural constructions, expressing his views of a changing material landscape.

Liu Wei’s work is included in numerous collections such as the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney.

Lehmann Maupin

 

See: 1) Phillips “20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale,” Lot 36, Hong Kong, 27 May 2018 2) Lehmann Maupin

#liuwei #art #artmarket #contemporaryart #arthistory #digitalart #tech #entrepreneur #collection #portfolio #architecture #design #realestatedevelopment #luxury #urban #landscape #china #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #newyork #losangeles #miami #london #paris #berlin #oslo #zurich #vienna #milan #dubai

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Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (2006)

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (oil and enamel on canvas in an antiquated frame with gilded ornament) of 2006.

A young man in contemporary street-wear straddles the cross on which he will die. The unusual cross is associated with St. Andrew, a disciple of Christ who was executed for refusing to renounce his faith.

Kehinde Wiley poses his contemporary St. Andrew against rich brocade that comes to life as it winds over the figure.

The subject is painted in a powerful and dramatic Baroque style in strong contrast to the flat background.

Kehinde Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, now lives and works in New York. He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and his MFA from Yale in 2001.

Represented by New York gallerist Sean Kelly, Wiley “has firmly situated himself within art history’s portrait painting tradition.

“As a contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, among others,

“Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, majestic, and the sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world.”

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew,” a museum purchase of 2014, is now in the collection of Norfolk, Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art.

 

#kehindewiley #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #oldmasters #portrait #obama #losangeles #newyork #nigeria #africa #berlin #oslo #london #zurich #milan #dubai #hongkong #shanghai #seoul #tokyo #jakarta #luxury #design #architecture #realestatedevelopment #collection #portfolio #seankelly #chryslermuseum

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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017

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R8 Property’s energy positive Powerhouse Telemark

Powerhouse Telemark, an energy positive (producing more energy than it consumes) 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-foot), 11-story office building, has been commissioned by real estate developer Emil Eriksrød for the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn.

Eriksrød has commissioned the American-Norwegian architecture and design firm Snøhetta to design the building. Powerhouse Telemark is set to be completed in February of 2019.

 “The future is all about thinking big, bold, and long term,” says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorson, “and we need someone to pave the way. With its innovative solutions and design, we believe this building will inspire commercial real estate developers worldwide to push the limits of what buildings can accomplish”.

“The world needs a lot of energy-positive buildings,” observes the developer, Emil Eriksrød, CEO of R8 Property. “I hope we will be plagiarized and copied, replicated in all seven continents.”

“This building should do wonders in lowering the bar for daring to do both spectacular and environmentally forward buildings, hopefully in a combination”.


See:

“Snøhetta Designs World’s Northernmost Energy Positive Building in Norway,” Patrick Lynch, ArchDaily, 18 January 2017

“Snøhetta designs ‘potentially world-changing office building’ for small Norwegian town,” Amy Frearson, Dezeen, 19 January 2017

 

#powerhousetelemark #emileriksrød #r8property # snøhetta #porsgrunn #norway #design #architecture #engineering #realestatedevelopment #realestate #commercialrealestate #energy #energypositive #solar #solarenergy #co2 #resilience #luxury #art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #museums #newyork #berlin #milan #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #taipei #jakarta #singapore

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Mark Bradford: “Constitution IV” (2013)

Mark Bradford’s “Constitution IV” (mixed media on canvas, 2013) sold, from the collection of Fredric Brandt, plastic surgeon to the stars, for £3,778,500 at the Phillips London Contemporary Art Evening Sale of 14 October 2015. This sale set an auction record, since exceeded, for the artist.

Mark Bradford, born in Los Angeles, California in 1961, continues to live and work in Los Angeles. He has been exclusively represented by Hauser & Wirth since 2015.

Christopher Bedford, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, considers Mark Bradford to be “the most important living abstract painter”.

The catalogue prepared by Phillips observes that “Mark Bradford’s vast tactile works characterized by their décollaged surfaces, evoke a sense of transience and instability. In compositions such as ‘Constitution IV’ however, these ideas transcend material objects and infiltrate less physical subjects consequently, indicating the fragility of seemingly solid notions.”

The essay continues, “Using printed text through his collage and décollage technique the canvas becomes a surface offering insights into further meanings and depths … Thus, the viewer is drawn into Bradford’s works in order to try and draw meaning from the myriad of letters flickering in and out of focus.”

See:

Phillips, Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London, 14 October 2015, Lot 21

“Phillips Rebounds With $48.8M Contemporary Art Haul in London, Setting Records for Bradford and Nara,” Nate Freeman, ArtNews, 14 October 2015;

“This Painting Will Put Mark Bradford among the Most Expensive Living Artists,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 22 February 2018

 

#art #artmarket #markbradford #contemporaryart #abstraction #collection #artcollector #hauser&wirth #baltimoremuseumofart #christopherbedford #baltimore #maryland #losangeles #california #venice #luxury #newyork #paris #berlin #london #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #taipei #jakarta #singapore #realestate #commercialrealestate

 

 

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M Moser Associates’ office in New York’s 1913-vintage Woolworth Building to be retrofit to Platinum WELL Building Standard

International architecture and design firm M Moser Associates is retrofitting and revitalizing their new office space on the 24th-floor of Manhattan’s Woolworth Building.

The Woolworth Building was built in 1913 and was, at the time, the tallest building in the world, engineered to maintain its own electricity, heat, and subway entrance, with windows that could, and still can, be opened when outdoor pollution levels are low.

While acknowledging challenges in retrofitting old office space, such as dealing with old electrical, old plumbing, and old HVAC, M Moser Associates points out that all buildings represent embodied energy and that embodied energy best be recognized and optimized.

As M Moser Associates revitalizes their office space on the 24th floor, the company will pursue both a Platinum Well Building Standard and USGBC LEED certification.

Initiated by Delos and the International WELL Building Institute, the WELL Building Standard is evidence-based, rating the quality of water, air, and light, and is geared toward occupant health, wellness, fitness, and productivity. The WELL Building Standard “marries best practices in design and construction with evidence-based medical and scientific research – harnessing the built environment as a vehicle to support human health and well-being.”

M Moser & Associates brings a similar focus on restructuring and re-engineering office space towards employee health, wellness, and productivity in all of its office spaces, including those in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco, and Guangzhou.

See:

“Woolworth Building Office in New York Becomes a Retrofit Lab” | Alyssa Danigelis, Environmental Leader, 30 October 2017

“Learning from Plans to Retrofit One of America’s Oldest Skyscrapers” | Adele Peters, Fastcodesign, 30 October 2017

Delos

#architecture #design #officespace #InternationalWELLBuildingInstitute #Delos #health #wellness #fitness #urbanliving #urbanluxury #luxury #realestate #commercialrealestate #CRE #builtenvironment #buildingtech #engineering #H2O #CO2 #HongKong #London #SanFrancisco #Guangzhou #resilience

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Max Beckmann’s “Hölle der Vögel” (Birds’ Hell) (1937-1938) Sells for US$45,834,365

Max Beckmann’s “Hölle der Vögel” (Birds’ Hell) sold for US$45,834,365 at Christie’s London Tuesday evening (June 27).

The painting, executed in oil on canvas in 1937 – 1938, drew three bidders and sold to Larry Gagosian. It is understood that Mr. Gagosian was bidding on behalf of the New York collector Leon Black.

Art dealer Richard Feigen acquired the painting in 1983. Hölle der Vögel” (Bird’s Hell) has remained in his collection until now.

See:

“Boosted by Gagosian’s Record Bid on Beckmann, Christie’s Notches a $190 Million Impressionist and Modern Sale” | Colin Gleadell, Artnet.com, 27 June 2017

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, London, 27 June 2017, Results | Christie’s

Max Beckmann Hölle der Vögel, 1937-38 (special catalogue) | Christie’s

 

#art #artcollections #artmarket #MaxBeckmann #BirdsHell #HöllederVögel #Christie’s #LarryGagosian #LeonBlack #realestate #resilience #luxury #urbanluxury #NewYork #London