ZHONG CHENG

Zhong Cheng 2024 Autumn Auction「Modern And Contemporary Art」

  • Zhong Cheng 2022 Autumn Auction「Modern And Contemporary Art」
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    JOSH SPERLING (b.1984)

    Big Chief

    2016

    Acrylic on Canvas and Plywood
    140 x 104 cm

    Signed on the reverse: Sperling in English, dated 2016

    Estimate TWD 1,800,000-2,400,000
    USD 58,100-77,400
    HKD 0-0

    Hammer Price TWD 2,160,000
    USD 67,269
    HKD 529,412

Provenance：

Illustrated：

Exhibition：Josh Sperling: Man and Child, Bill Brady Gallery, Miami USA, February 18 - March 25, 2017

Exposition：

“I feel like as an artist you spend a lot of time inside your own head. The most fun part of being an artist is daydreaming,” Josh Sperling said at an interviewee for his 2022 solo exhibition, DAYDREAM.

In the first half of 2022, on view in Perrotin New York were Josh Sperling’s collection of works from the past decade. Sperling is an artist who has been quite active in recent years, known for his precisely calculated colorization and minimalistic shaping and leaning that renders his works a 3D presentation and interaction with the space. Born in New York in 1984, Sperling grew up in the 1990s America when street art was at its peak, an era marked by vibrant Americanesque cultures and a thriving economy attracting art elites and emerging talents of all disciplines seeking the American Dream. Diverse artistic styles were thus nurtured and evolved into a sort of American Hybrid Art, free, diverse, accommodating, and unburdened. Sperling is one such rising star of American art enlightened by pop art, guided by “Urbart” to incorporate technolog ㄧy and converge cold abstract minimalist thinking and design.  

  Sperling started out as a graphic designer and didn’t enter the realm of pure art until 2012 when he worked as an assistant in KAWS’ Brooklyn studio where he spent five years doing carpentry, color mixing, drawing, administration, sales and so on. His time in KAWS’ studio provides an insight into how an art studio functions from art creation to expansion, and how it interacts with the art circle. Particularly on creation, Sperling recalled he was quite impressed with KAWS’s steering and maneuvering of color which indirectly unleashed his zest for color and shown him that color can be perceived and explored in ways different from his previous comprehension. KAWS also introduced to him the aesthetics of shape sculpting and interaction with multiple spaces. KAWS’ influence propelled Sperling to blaze a new path with his ardent passion for art; KAWS has become incredibly important to him.   

Art being accommodating allows an artist to daydream, a quality that defines an artist. The infinitude of color allows Sperling to gallop towards an expansive daydream space. 
 
Likewise, the work, Big Chief, was conceptualized in minimalism as a revolt against fixed signs and emotional impact, turning the concrete image of a chief into a blurry treatment of a déjà vu possibility through the matrix of graphic software, computing permutation for key shapes and extraction of jumbled parameters. Sperling is in control of the signified existing within his reach while encompassing the software-collected data, i.e., the signifier that is “rational yet beyond my confinement”. Finally, to secure perfection that is out of reach of manually created works, he resorts to a high-tech automatic milling machine for meticulous production of the plywood base material. To deliberately steer clear of typical painting frames, Sterling opts for a bespoke sculpture stand instead, which seems to still pose as a limitation, a feint attack administered by receding from rationality via sensibility. That is also a major highlight of Sperling’s works and his approach in exploring ways of creating space through work vis-à-vis creating work through space.    

The combination of organic and inorganic shapes gives regular wavy curves to the left of Big Chief plus a quasi-swaying silhouette. Its exaggerated headwear is rendered with precise proportion and silky smoothness tinted with elusive sensibility. This is almost a breakthrough from the contradicting plight of minimalism’s appeal to the low-threshold freedom and the human concept of beauty in the 1960s and 1970s. Further, regarding Sperling’s soul of color, he has developed a 1,200-color gamut and the use of dust-free paint spraying technology for coloring, as documented in interviews. Stacked through layers of evenly toned colors are the interspersing computer matching and human judgment to produce a conflicting yet natural visage with 3D visual effects. A look back at the shaping base materials, they seem to move in a flux of inorganic shapes and occasionally congeal to form organic shapes, the two constantly alternating in their relationships as the viewer goes through the viewing experience. More importantly, the work brings viewers into a feast of inner and outer spaces by immersing them in absolute purity containing no speck of impurity. In here, Sperling intends for Big Chief to be a domain connected with mystic powers, or it could be a palm tree with layers of bark, or an animated space where air can enter and exit. Or is it merely an august chief with searing eyes, wearing a decorative nose ring. When it exists on display in realistic space, is addition at work or subtraction? As the extended freedom and pleasure are shared, the act of immersion, drifting, reversing and exploring will blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, image and object. Much like the daydreaming Sperling, everyone is welcome to enter that daydream.

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