{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":50157,"auction_id":99,"set_id":131,"lot_number":"68","artist":"Charlie Co (b. 1960)","title":"A Moment's Rest","starting_price":140000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 2016 (lower right)","medium":"acrylic on canvas","size":"48\" x 48\" (122 cm x 122 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist \nconfirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The works of lauded Negrense contemporary artist Charlie Co form a series of recognizable iconographies revolving around the whimsical and eccentric. Brimming with vibrancy and candidness, Co’s art is often imbued with powerful allegories acting as commentaries on today’s socio-political affairs. But in select works, Co imbibes a celebration of his life and art. Such is the case with this particular piece. Titled A Moment’s Rest, Co incorporates familiar elements from his surreal visual narratives, such as horses and jesters, and interweaves them into a work that encapsulates the essential Charlie Co.
Filled with child-like exuberance, the work serves as Co’s self- portrait, presenting an outlook into the artist’s disposition. It is a visual chronicle and celebration of Co’s life as an artist and a human being imbued with struggles and triumphs. Two years prior to the creation of this work, Co had a successful kidney transplant after suffering from kidney failure due to diabetes. Here, we can see Co at the very center of the piece, intimately living and experiencing a renewed life in the surreal world he had always created. The artist says of this work: “You could see me, the artist, sitting comfortably, dreaming, holding a brush in one hand and my painting in the other, surrounded by my favorite images of horses and clowns that are always recurring in my whimsical world.”
In a highly introspective and cathartic work that powerfully speaks of his being, Co expresses that his life is essentially none other than his art because, for him, art heals. Co’s application of his trademark vivid palette embodies his impassioned stance toward the subject. One can discern an atmosphere of lightheartedness and, at the same time, intimately share the artist’s lived experience—and his indebtedness to his art and its dramatis personae that accompanied him amid affliction.
Co once said: “A painter is also a visionary, helping people understand what is going on in his environment by creating something visually powerful. But one should consider that an artist should get right in his inner self first before anything else.” (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Charlie Co (b. 1960) A Moment's Rest signed and dated 2016 (lower right) acrylic on canvas 48\" x 48\" (122 cm x 122 cm)