PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

Evan Penny (b. 1953)
(Old) Stretch #3
signed, titled and dated 'E. PENNY. 2006 (OLD) STRETCH #3' (on the reverse)
silicon, pigment, hair and fabric on aluminium
36 x 8 x 2½in. (91.4 x 20.3 x 6.4cm.)
Executed in 2006

Provenance:
Sperone Westwater, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007.

* Please see our Conditions of Sale for definitions of cataloguing symbols.

Specialist Notes:

Evan Penny’s art illustrates how the act of viewing is a very subjective experience. Using the traditional format of the portrait bust, (Old) Stretch #3 Penny pushes the boundaries of representation and sculpture. The present work is part of the artist’s series defined by the terms ‘stretch’ and ‘skew’ which refer to image manipulation techniques utilized in computer programmes. Penny explains that the pieces ‘take their cue from the question: “What would happen if I take a distortion of the human body that is ‘normalized’ in an image context, that we might assume belongs exclusively to the image world, and bring that into the space we physically occupy?”’ (E. Penny, ‘Commentary: Stretch, Skew and Anamorph: 2003 to present’, 2011,).

Penny begins by sculpting his fictitious characters in clay already in their stretched state. For Penny, modelling ensures that his figures have a liveliness that he feels can be lost in the casting process. The sculpture is deemed a successful character if, when a photograph is taken of it, it can produce a realistically proportioned figure once digitally manipulated. In so doing, Penny inverts ‘the assumed relationship between realistic source photograph and manipulated sculpture…The realistic photograph (comes after and) is distorted. The stretched sculpture (comes first and) is not’ (E. Penny, 2011).

As critics Robert Enright and Meeka Walsh note, ‘what makes his sculptures so compelling, and so unsettling, is that [the sculptures’] energy is in direct proportion to how far they depart from reality; their strangeness is measured in our appreciation of the distance between what we anticipate and what we get’ (R. Enright and M. Walsh, ‘The Artful Doubter: Evan Penny and the Making of Extraordiary Objects, in Border Crossings, no. 98, 2006, p. 26).

(Old) Stretch #3 is one of our sale specialist, Amanda Lo Iacono’s, sale highlights. Read more about this and her other picks here.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.