Sparer Chairs

Medium: Photographic drawing in colors printed on wove paper mounted to Dibond
Year: 2014
Sheet: 42 1/4 x 69 1/4 inches (107.3 x 175.9 cm)
Edition: 25
Printer: The Artist

Signed, dated and numbered in pencil

 

 

“I don’t use one perspective. I use very many. That is where photography is going, multiple perspectives. This is what digital permits.”

Sparer Chairs is a monumental example of David Hockney’s multidisciplinary practice and his extended exploration into the medium of photography. Executed in 2014 for the British artist’s solo show at L.A. Louver Gallery in Los Angeles, the present lot belongs to Hockney’s later body of work known as “photographic drawings”. Depicting a virtual version of the artist’s Los Angeles studio, this panoramic photograph shifts between abstraction and representation, while extensively exploring the spatial relations between the subject and its surroundings.

Sparer Chairs employs innovative methods of digital production, showcasing Hockney’s extensive engagement with new technologies. By utilizing a photogrammetric software to combine hundreds of single snapshots from various viewpoints, the artist created three-dimensional approximations for individual objects, which he then grouped in a notional studio space. By digitally altering the object’s colors, and manually adding highlights and shadows that contradict the principles of traditional lighting, Hockney combined his drawing and painting practices with photography, creating a photographic drawing which appears at once awkwardly hyper-realistic and subtly wrong.

“The eye is always moving. When my eye moves the perspective alters according to the way I’m looking, so it’s constantly changing; in real life when you are looking at five people there are a thousand perspectives.”

Sparer Chairs further explores Hockney’s ongoing investigation into the notion of perspective, which first began in the early 1980s with his composite polaroids. Introducing a complex depiction of space, the present lot attests to the artist’s efforts to transcend the constraints of conventional one-point perspective by re-inventing the portrayal of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Infusing the photographic drawing with multiple points of view, Hockney favors reverse perspective to one-point perspective, playing with our habits of sight and encouraging the eye to freely roam across the composition. Sparer Chairs is thus emblematic of Hockney’s artistic endeavors both conceptually and visually, confirming his status as one of the most influential contemporary artists.

Source: Phillips

 

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