{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":58482,"auction_id":121,"set_id":155,"lot_number":"117","artist":"Arturo Sanchez (b. 1980)","title":"Contemplation","starting_price":300000,"signed_dated":"dated 2011","medium":"oil on canvas, collage on sand blasted mirror","size":"54 1/4\" x 72\" (138 cm x 183 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Christie's, Asian Contemporary Art (Day Sale), Hong Kong, 27 November 2011, Lot 1485","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Agraduate of architecture, the works of multimedia artist Arturo Sanchez combine the spontaneity of his usage of a multitude of artistic forms and the precision and design skills he had cultivated during his college years.
An innovator, Sanchez dabbles in a multitude of art forms, making use of different source materials in a style he calls “collages.” These collages eventually became his signature medium, the foundation of his practice that set him apart from the rest.
From his 2009 show, Sanchez’s works evolved rapidly. His impartial usage of multiple media in one canvas — ranging from cut-out canvases, mirrors, and resin-encased collages, among others — creates a story laid down by multiple layered visual cues.
His 2011 Contemplation encapsulates the best of early Sanchez works. A layered piece playing on negative spaces, color inversions, and mirrored images, this work shows two mirrored images of the same woman. Rendered in reversed black-and-white, Sanchez depicts the same woman duplicated beside each other, one hand raised tentatively to the skies and their eyes locked in a faraway gaze. Their billowing skirts occupy the lower half of the canvas, providing solace for the bird transfixed on a piece of branch. The bird and the branch, in quintessential Sanchez, were both made from sand-blasted mirror. When used as a literary device, the mirror becomes an invitation for further introspection. One must stop on their tracks and look into one’s reflection, to be imbued by the human condition and their never ending quest for answers that have confounded philosophers for as long as humanity has lived.
The bird that has settled on the woman’s skirt seems to be a crow. A prominent figure in various bodies of myths, the crows have a plethora of meanings — often said to be a symbol of bad luck, crows could also be seen as companions of the gods. However, this particular piece seems to echo another meaning of the black bird: that of the eternal sleep.
As is the case with Sanchez, this can be gleaned through the images painted on the mirror backing. He has collaged images depicting the three stages of life behind the mirrors depicting the branch and the bird. To create this effect, he peeled away the painted backing of the mirror before inserting his cutouts and sealing them with lacquer. The effect is haunting: a looking glass trapping worlds within itself.
Through his enumeration of “budding, blooming, and deterioration,” Sanchez’s Contemplation is a haunting piece of media that encapsulates within itself a living world. From the purported beginning to its putative conclusion, Contemplation carries not the devastation of the end but the introspection for the future, a continuing of the cycle. (Hannah Valiente)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":340000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":340000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":408544,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":63737,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/117.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":64055,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/117a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[220000,240000,260000,280000,300000,320000,340000,360000,380000,400000,450000,500000,550000,600000,650000,700000,750000,800000,900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":116,"next":118,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}