WELCOME Every two years, with great anticipation, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego stages its benefit Art Auction, an exhibition and fundraiser that infuses resources into the Museum’s acquisitions and programs. The dozens of works on view are created by the leading artists of our time. Whether at the peak of their careers or at the launch, nearby or international, these noteworthy artists have been selected and their works vetted by the Museum’s curatorial team. Indeed, the objects reflect the curatorial interests and perspective of MCASD. Numerous artists included in the benefit Art Auction have been featured in MCASD exhibitions and many have works in the collection. With tremendous generosity, these artists donate their creations. We are incredibly moved by their support and recognize their crucial role in the success of this fundraiser. Their donations not only benefit MCASD, but also foster the act of collecting. Over the decades, countless local collections have been enhanced through the benefit Art Auction. The opportunity to live with a unique work of art is a lure, yet the field is vast. This dynamic event narrows the scope and provides the context, highlighting works of the highest caliber that reflect the adventurous spirit of MCASD. Here, artists become patrons, museum-goers become art collectors, and MCASD becomes the hub that connects the art of our time with the people of our region. We encourage you to find your art in this dynamic exhibition and we thank you for your support. Kathryn Kanjo The David C. Copley Director and CEO TABLE OF CONTENTS ART AUCTION 2018 6 Live Auction WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 > 6:30–10 PM Jacobs Building at MCASD Downtown 16 Silent Auction 1100 Kettner Blvd., San Diego 38 Featured Artists 39 Art Auction Contributors BENEFITTING MCASD’S EXHIBITIONS, EDUCATION PROGRAMS, 40 Board of Trustees AND FUTURE ART ACQUISITIONS 41 Sponsors 51 Absentee Bid Form 52 Auction Procedures 54 Conditions of Sale LOT #101 LOT #102 FRIEDRICH KUNATH LIZA LOU I Like It Here, Can I Stay, 2017 Untitled, Pink/Gold, 2013 acrylic and oil on canvas woven glass beads 24 x 30 inches 69 7/8 x 72 inches Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong $20,000–$30,000 $175,000–$200,000 German-born artist Friedrich Kunath has lived in Los Angeles for a decade, and his work suggests For more than 20 years, the glass bead has been Liza Lou’s primary art-making material, and she a merging of European art historical traditions with a psychedelic, California-Dreamin’ sensibility. employs those tiny units of color to extraordinary ends. The MacArthur genius award-winning Romantic landscapes akin to Caspar David Friedrich or J.M.W. Turner are combined with kitsch American artist expanded her studio practice to Durban, South Africa some years ago, a region imagery from 1960s and 70s cartoons and greeting cards. The resulting images are both sublime noted for its beading traditions. In her recent more abstract works, Lou addresses the history and and surreal, ironic and melancholic. In I Like It Here, Can I Stay, the thickly painted stripes of an traditions of hard-edge painting. These careful and labored works explore the boundaries of color inverted rainbow echo the colors of a moody seascape. Above the horizon floats a line from a song and form, highlighting the possibilities of imperfection. The irregular stripes in Untitled, Pink/Gold by The Smith’s—the English pop band known for its mordant, melancholy lyrics—expressing a longing reference Frank Stella, while Lou’s hand-woven beads are used in place of paint to create a dynamic for home. Kunath’s work is held in MCASD’s collection, as well as the collections of the Hammer and engaging surface that shifts and shines in the light. In 2013, MCASD organized the debut 6 Museum, LACMA, MOCA Los Angeles, MoMA, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. 7 presentation of her large scale installation, Color Field. LOT #103 LOT #104 NATE LOWMAN TALA MADANI Square Wisconsin Cairn, 2013 Head in the Oven (Gradation), 2018 oil and alkyd on linen oil on linen 33 x 33 inches 20 x 17 inches Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone Gallery, New York and Los Angeles Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles $65,000–$75,000 $25,000–$35,000 Painter Nate Lowman emerged in the early 2000s as part of a group of New York artists once Tala Madani is acclaimed for her irreverent paintings and animations of middle-aged men depicted referred to as “Warhol’s children.” Like Warhol, who painted soup cans and celebrities, Lowman is in situations of childish play and transgression. In these absurdist parodies of patriarchal culture, the known for his own distinct lexicon of images culled from American culture, including smiley faces, balding, bloated characters appear vulnerable and exposed. Stylistically, Madani’s paintings reference bullet holes, pine-tree air fresheners—and indeed, celebrities. In recent years, Lowman has turned to a range of sources, from comic books and cinema to the macho modernism of Pablo Picasso and the more tranquil subjects drawn from nature, the environment, and memory. Square Wisconsin Cairn Abstract Expressionists. Recently, Madani has explored the meaning and symbolism of light, while pictures an evocative formation of stones sitting in a body of water, painted in a pastel palette. As in continuing to tackle provocative ideas. In Head in the Oven (Gradation), a man is seen kneeling—a much of Lowman’s work, the grainy image calls attention to the process of mechanical reproduction, recurring image in the artist’s work—with his head thrust into a glowing oven. The figure’s head with its variations and flaws, but here the dappled surface of the water suggests an Impressionist is surrounded by light, imparting the suggestion of religious iconography to an otherwise morbid landscape: Warhol meets Monet. Lowman is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Aspen scenario. In 2017, Madani was featured in the Whitney Biennial and in a solo exhibition at Centre de 8 Art Museum. 9 Culture Contemporaine, Montpellier, France. Her work is held in MCASD’s collection. LOT #105 LOT #106 WANGECHI MUTU LARI PITTMAN Dengue Virus, 2017 red soil, paper pulp and wood glue The State of the Interior, Today! #22, 2012 16 x 16 x 16 inches Cel-Vinyl, aerosol lacquer, and gesso on wood panel Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels 20 x 16 inches $25,000–$35,000 Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles $60,000–$70,000 Kenyan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Wangechi Mutu is known for her collages, sculptures, and installations that draw imagery from a diverse range of sources, from medical illustrations and Lari Pittman emerged in the 1980s as a major force in the art world, reinvigorating painting as many anthropological photography to fashion and the natural world. Mutu’s beguiling works conjure a artists moved away from it. His graphic canvases draw upon traditions of Pattern and Decoration, world both ancient and futuristic, inhabited by hybrid creatures that are human, animal, and machine. layering references to varied aesthetic styles, from Victorian silhouettes and wallpaper to cartoons Recent sculptures such as Dengue Virus employ natural materials to emphasize a raw materiality, and advertising. Often visually overwhelming, Pittman’s imagery is colorful and energetic, creating experimenting with texture, form, and scale. The patterned orb of Dengue Virus might be a planet a frenzied scene of objects and figures that exist in his unique painted spaces. His use of ornament seen in miniature, or a microscopic virus magnified to monumental size. This shifting perspective imbues the work with themes of life, death, love, and sex. Pittman’s mid-career survey was organized prompts questions about the relationship between humans and the environment, challenging our by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996. More recently, the artist was the subject of a 10 imagined dominance over nature. Mutu is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at ICA Boston. 11 survey exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. LOT # 107 LOT #108 ED RUSCHA ALEXIS SMITH 3/4, 2016 East Meets West, 2014 dry pigment and acrylic on paper mixed media collage 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches 19 x 15 inches Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles $30,000–$40,000 $12,000–$15,000 Since the 1960s, Ed Ruscha has put a distinctively West Coast spin on Pop art, drawing upon Since the 1970s, Alexis Smith has scrutinized our cultural imaginary to reveal the romance and ruin vernacular culture, popular media, and the landscape of Los Angeles. The iconic artist first gained of the American dream. Best known for her collages, Smith combines found images, objects, and attention for paintings, drawings, and artist's books that feature text and typography as central texts to tease out shared cultural associations and suggest ambiguous narratives. In East Meets elements. Not interested in their defined meaning, Ruscha carefully stages his words as objects, West, Smith uses a found thrift-store painting of a rose as her backdrop, adorning it with a bamboo evoking sound, texture, and movement. Such works combine dynamic compositions, beautiful drafts- frame and affixing a fake bamboo leaf to its surface. Placed in the corner is a fortune cookie that manship, and vivid color to convey distinctive visual excitement. 3/4 exemplifies this strategy with its reads, “A romantic mystery will soon add interest to your life.” In this way, Smith takes on the cliches enigmatic slanted numbers set against a grainy field of green.