'For me the act of drawing is an event. There is a moment when there is nothing going on but the act of drawing' C. Piene
Chloe Piene has devoted her artistic practice almost entirely to drawing, establishing a recognisable style that is both distinct and delicate at the same time. Spindly outlines create an intertwining network of sinuously winding curves that give birth to figures, faces and shapes. Her compositions are imaginative and entrancing, always playing with the power of association – bridging concepts and ideas together in a visually enticing way.
Piene’s drawings have been exhibited alongside works by Joseph Beuys, Hans Bellmer, Paul Noble and Paul McCarthy, to name a few. Her drawings are in prominent collections worldwide such as Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, the MOCA, Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Olbricht Collection, Essen, MONA, Tasmania, The Zabludowicz Collection, London, and The Cranford Arts Collection, in London. Most recently, Piene has been included in the prominent drawing retrospective Drawing Now at The Albertina (2015) Drawing Now, as well as in Tate’s 2014 publication Contemporary Drawing.
Christie’s is pleased to present Ambassadors of the Now, an exceptional selection of works from a leading collection offered across Day and First Open Online sales in 2021.
Ambassadors of the Now represents the efforts of an important private collection whose mission concentrates on raising arts awareness, supporting and lending to institutions, and nurturing London’s artistic community. Since the 1990s, the collection has constantly evolved, responding to new ideas and movements in art and growing with the artists and institutions it has supported.
Indeed, this collection understands the role of art within the everyday and, over the past two decades, it has worked to represent and amplify a diversity of voices and experiences. Drawing from the significant movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, the art of the collection is united by a courageous aesthetic thesis.
Conceptual works by John Baldessari, Richard Prince and Rirkrit Tiravanija + Superflex make clear the devotion to the vanguard. Such considerations are transmitted through the innovative vocabularies found in the more recent works of Wilhelm Sasnal and Abraham Cruzvillegas, among others. Yet the collection has always been invested in figuration, as seen in Tim Gardner’s hyperreal Friends at Wedding or the dreamy expanses of Justine Kurland’s photographic terrains.
Across the collection, colour is decadent, vibrant, and powerfully emotive. In works by Valeska Soares and Clement Rodzielski, it is a sweeping almost structural force. A similar expressive intensity can be seen in the collection’s considerable photographic holdings by artists such as Jeff Wall, Damián Ortega and Ugo Rondinone. Like these images, the collection too is forward-looking, connected, and incandescent. Coming together in a vivid ensemble, Ambassadors of the Now presents a vision of art’s place in the world and its role as a vehicle of personal expression.