Bonhams' Urban art auction – beyond expectation

February 10, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer

The art auction market has been around for years, certainly a lot more than street art has been but yet, this emerging form of art seems to be on everybody’s lips and wallet indeed.

Bonhams’ auction, which just happened, has definitely showed us that. The bidding was fierce, the desire to own pieces from street artists, a must. The total sale from this Urban Art Sale at Bonham’s New Bond Street reached 455,760 GBP, with almost half of the works selling above their high estimates.

Here are some of the best sales

Banksy
‘Save or Delete Jungle Book’, 2001. This piece was originally made for Greenpeace
Sold for £78,000

Banksy - Jungle book

Ben Eine
Circus A-Z’, 2010
stencil spray paint and glitter on canvas
Sold for £6,600

Ben Eine - Circus

Futura 2000
Untitled, a performance piece created live on the Clash’s ‘Combat Rock’ tour, circa 1983
Sold for £38,400

Futura 2000 - Untitled

via Hang-Up

PREVIEW

Markus Kiebel at Arch402 – Inside Complexity

February 8, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer

The first London solo exhibition by German artist Markus Keibel sees a continuation of his interactive site-specific installations, as featured in PORTIZMIR 2 (2010), the triennial of contemporary art held in Izmir, Turkey. Exploring semantic roots and the poetry of materials, Keibel’s work brings to surface enigmatic, abstract forms.

Markus Kiebel

Since 2005, the Berlin-based artist has not only developed conceptual site-specific installations, but also an abstract idiom using different forms of human traces. The perception of viewers is the issue addressed by Keibel, whose current work investigates how colour interacts with viewers. His sculptures, paintings and works on paper draw their elements from simple materials, often using pigmented glass and acrylic colours to modify their mode of operation.

Created on-site especially for the Arch 402 Gallery, Inside Complexity will reveal a large-scale floor sculpture, designed for viewers to walk over and leave traces as they move. Characterized as an ever-changing form, the four concentrated circles—created using different coloured pigment powders—shift and disperse throughout the exhibition venue, causing the colours to lose their intensity. As part of the exhibition, the transformation of Keibel’s ever-changing floor sculpture will be captured both in a time-lapsed video and on canvas.

In order to create these final works, the gallery space will be closed the day following the Private View (11th Feb) when Keibel will use the transformed pigment areas to create big canvases (170 x 280 cm), revealing the transcribed traces of human movement.

Keibel’s interactive installations are less focused on how interaction with the work evokes feelings in the public, but rather, with how these feelings act on given materials, as the pigments ultimately seem to reveal a sentimental beauty. Rendering the pigments in his own specific mode of representation, Keibel not only prefigures subjectivity in the abstract but also his own subjectivity, from a viewpoint that questions the prescriptive experience.

Words from Necmi Sonmez

Where – ARCH 402 GALLERY | Cremer Street, E2 8HD | Tue-Fri 11-6
When – 12 February – 18 March 2011 / Private View 10 February 6-9pm

PREVIEW

SAFEWALLS: Art Project by Cirque du Soleil

February 7, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer 1 Comment

To kick off the new year, High Roller Society teams up with Cirque du Soleil to launch a brand-new art project called SAFEWALLS.

On the first leg of a worldwide tour SAFEWALLS will stop over in London for 3 days ONLY, featuring original works and limited edition prints by British artists Sweet Toof, Jon Burgerman and Glenn Anderson.

The Safewalls project celebrates Cirque du Soleil’s roots—the street—as well as the creative freedom and raw energy associated with street arts by pairing up with artists all over the world to create art posters inspired by its shows. These art posters will be exhibited around the world on a 12-month tour, and limited edition prints of the works will be available for sale via High Roller Society and a dedicated website: www.safewalls.org

Safewalls at High Roller society

In this first video, in a series of three, Jon Burgerman, Sweet Toof and Glenn Anderson introduce themselves, talk about their art, about street art and a bit about breakdance! The next video will be unveiled next week and will present the artists’ vision of London.

SAFEWALLS: Art Project by Cirque du Soleil
When: 18 – 20 February 2011, Private View 17 February 7:00-10:00pm
Gallery hours Friday-Sunday 11-6pm (during exhibition) and by appointment
Where: 10 PALMERS ROAD | LONDON E2 0SY

Words from High Roller Society

PREVIEW

Group show at Signal gallery – Mixed doubles

February 2, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer

In our first group show in the new Paul Street space, we are presenting four very interesting artists whose work links and entwines in very winning ways. It’s a fine match between the abstract and figurative ends of the painting spectrum.

However, this is not a one sided game, but an exploration of overlapping skills and techniques, that will make excellent viewing, if not producing any obvious winners.

Dan Baldwin
Of the two strongly figurative artists in the show, Dan Baldwin is best known to the UK. His dynamic and intricately subtle paintings are a familiar and respected part of the contemporary/urban art scene.

Joram Roukes
Joram Roukes is a new name to the UK. Roukes large-scale oil paintings have a sense of fantasy and humour that is superficially akin to Baldwin’s work. However, there is a more robust and serious purpose to these works, which gives them a powerful and dark effect.

Joram Rouke

Andrew McAttee
The absence of any familiar figurative imagery seems to create an unnerving sense of emptiness. This is indeed joyous and decorative work (Power Pop Art as the artist calls it), with a childlike directness, but somehow there is still a sense of a void, giving the work an edge.

John Squire
His artwork first came to public notice with the very popular Pollockesque album cover designs for his band. Since then, his work has been paired down and has become generally abstract in form.