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PROPERTY from a new york collector JOEL SHAPIRO (b. 1941) UNTITLED bronze 36 x 561/2 x 40 in. (91...

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PROPERTY from a new york collector JOEL SHAPIRO (b. 1941) UNTITLED bronze 36 x 561/2 x 40 in. (91...
PROPERTY from
a new york collector
JOEL SHAPIRO
(b. 1941)
UNTITLED
bronze
36 x 561/2 x 40 in.
(91.4 x 143.5 x 101.6 cm)
executed in 1985
this work is from an edition of three
ESTIMATE: $100,000-150,000

PROVENANCE
Paula Cooper Gallery, NEW YORK
A new sense of excitement is discernable in this phase of his work [of the 1980s], and it is manifested in the many inventive configurations that revel in their ambiguity. Shapiro is, in fact, driven by the possibility of producing alternative readings - "moments when it appears that a figure is a figure, and other moments when it looks like a bunch of wood stuck together - moments when it simultaneously configures and disfigures." His figures, like most of his sculptures, start with wood...Shapiro's initial configurations led him to explore changes in material, size and scale, and shape...Shapiro stresses the extent to which form and memory combine in his art: "My work has to do with memory of experience. It is an attempt to locate experience in form." For him, a form such as the figure is essentially a locus of remembered emotion, a repository in which past and present feelings are recorded. For this reason the figure remains, like memory, an abstraction, impossible to specify. As Shapiro puts it, "The figure is the source of abstraction."
H. Teicher, JOEL SHAPIRO: SCULPTURE AND DRAWINGS,
NEW YORK, 1998, pp. 99-100