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Property of a European Collector ANDREA ZITtEL (b. 1965) A TO Z COMFORT UNITS I & II steel, birc...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:40,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Property of a European Collector ANDREA ZITtEL (b. 1965) A TO Z COMFORT UNITS I & II steel, birc...
Property of a European Collector ANDREA ZITtEL (b. 1965) A TO Z COMFORT UNITS I & II steel, birch, plywood, paint and Plexiglas in five parts with foam mattress, upholstery, lightbulbs, mirror and objects i. ii. iii. iv: 54 x 251/2 x 18 in. (137.2 x 63.5 x 45.7 cm) v: 48 x 81 x 50 in. (121.9 x 205.7 x 127 cm) executed in 1994 Estimate: - $40,000-60,000 PROVENANCE Anthony d'Offay Gallery, LONDON EXHIBITED CHICAGO, Art Institute of Chicago, ABOUT PLACE: RECENT ART OF THE AMERICAS, March 11-May 21, 1995 LITERATURE M. Grynsztejn, ABOUT PLACE: RECENT ART OF THE AMERICAS, CHICAGO, 1995, pp. 122-123, pl. 55-59 (illustrated) As part of her ongoing mission to "perfect the organization of a life," Andrea Zittel reconfigures common domestic spaces-a kitchen, workspace, sleeping area and closets-into beautiful, fastidiously designed, functional objects that she refers to as "living units." "[These works] compositionally adhere to the Modernist idiom: a stripped-down language of elemental geometric shapes in which form is dictated solely by materials, and by ultimate function. [...] Zittel, however, has not only borrowed Modernism's reductive aesthetic, but also adopted its moral dimension; in the spirit of early twentieth-century Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus academy, and the De Stijl movement, Zittel designs little 'buildings' intended to improve-to simplify and thus purify-the lives of the individuals who inhabit them." (M. Grynsztejn, ABOUT PLACE: RECENT ART OF THE AMERICAS, Chicago, 1995, p. 19.) Zittel's philosophic aims are reflected in the utilitarian clarity of A To Z Comfort Units I & II, 1994, which transforms the mundane travails of daily life into Zen-like rituals. Although Zittel's artistic ideology echoes the conceptual principles behind suburban housing developments so prevalent in her home state of California, the portability of her living units is of central importance. "That Zittel's units are small, collapsible and easily transported, positively embraces the rootless and nomadic nature of contemporary life. The living modules, which when folded up look like nothing so much as steamer trunks or cargo crates, answer what their artist perceives as the need for a new kind of endlessly relocatable architecture with its own, internally generated sense of place-an architecture that acknowledges current 'patterns of movement and settlement and work.' Her dwelling-forms, defiantly private, sturdily self-reliant, and readily moveable, make a place that at once reflects and resists the larger cultural and social landscape of broken ties and relationships." (M. Grynsztejn, ibid, p.20.)