Lot 35W
Guillermo Kuitca(Argentinian, born 1961)Untitled (Nottingham), 1991
13 November 2019, 17:00 EST
New YorkUS$40,000 - US$60,000
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Guillermo Kuitca (Argentinian, born 1961)
Untitled (Nottingham), 1991
signed and dated 'Kuitca 1991' (on the underside of the mattress)
acrylic on mattress with wood and bronze legs
15 x 23 1/2 x 47 in.
38.1 x 59.7 x 119.4 cm.
signed and dated 'Kuitca 1991' (on the underside of the mattress)
acrylic on mattress with wood and bronze legs
15 x 23 1/2 x 47 in.
38.1 x 59.7 x 119.4 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, Monterrey, Mexico
Private Collection, Buenos Aires
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Guillermo Kuitca, 13 September-29 October 1991, n.p., illustrated in black and white (installation view), n.p., no. 7, illustrated in color (installation view) (this exhibition later traveled to Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Art Museum, 7 February-29 March 1992; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, 9 May-28 June 1992; Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, 8 August-11 October 1992)
Guillermo Kuitca's practice explores ideas of place and the human condition, frequently with surreal, nostalgic and haunting imagery. In the present work, Untitled (1991), a child-size mattress shows a map of the British midlands on its surface with the city of Nottingham indicated in its center. Hand painted, the map is purposely faded and mottled, with irregularly placed buttons serving as unconventional way-markers. Viewing the work is familiar, perhaps even nostalgic for some, yet there is something deeply uncanny about. The bed's scale makes the map both oversized and at a distant perspective, requiring the viewer to view the map from an isolated distance, almost a bird's-eye view.
Kuitca's works have long employed the use of beds, chairs and even house plans, the trappings of domesticity but imbued with a feeling of trauma and isolation. There is also a theatricality to these objects, Kuitca would use beds in the stage sets that he depicted in the 1980s, creating haunting images of the empty, abandoned feeling of the theatre moments after a play has ended and the set and props have been discarded. The beds, a fixture of his practice since the earliest days of his career, create a feeling of both childhood security tinged with both the threat and exclusion from the adult world. This, combined with the map imagery, creates a paradox between both the broad, sweeping expanses of the British countryside (in this instance) against the deeply intimate setting of one's childhood bedroom.
Beds are not uncommon in Contemporary Art, with Tracey Emin's My Bed (1998) proving an iconic self-portrait of the artist's most difficult personal period. Yayoi Kusama's four-poster forays into the medium are more whimsical, yet her protruding, polka dot infused mattress is also sinister. Works by Rachel Whiteread subvert the mattress with materials that are the antithesis of warm and welcoming, whilst the bed has been the quintessential background to paintings and portraiture throughout history, notably and more recently in the sought-after works of Lucian Freud.
This on-going exploration of the idea of place and home stems from the artist's experiences in his homeland of Argentina, where he continues to work and live, as well as the region's turbulent history. Kuitca was honored with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1991 at only age thirty, which would go on to travel throughout the country. The present work was included in this lauded exhibition and comes to market now for the first time.
