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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  A Private Collection of Fine Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  23 Oct 2012 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  10
• Lot Description:
  Dale Hickey
  (born 1937)
  Blue Table II, 1991
  oil on linen
  182.5 x 182.5cm
  signed lower right; gallery labels to verso
• Provenance:
  Powell Street Gallery, South Yarra; PricewaterhouseCoopers Collection, Melbourne; Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
• Notes:
  For the past 50 years Dale Hickey has been one of Australia's most unique and exploratory artists, with works ranging from lucid 'still lives' to the most abstracted conceptual works. Overarching this career is the artist's continual examination of concepts of space, his work persistently challenging the pictorial plane. Painted in the early 90s, Blue Table II is a highly significant example of the artist's studio paintings, which incorporate tables, canvases on easels, windows and artistic miscellany into flat illusionistic works which explore richness of colour and pictorial capriciousness, often referencing the geometric minimalism of his earlier work. The central feature of this painting refuses to behave exactly as the implied subject matter should, leaving the viewer uncertain exactly what they are looking at. The work plays with the viewer's understanding of depth, further complicated by the carefully positioned "constellation" set against a deep night blue. ÊThrough this manipulation of perspective, the work portrays a table, a window out into the night sky and possibly even a canvas on an easel. The effect of this, rather than distancing the viewer, causes one to become lost in the thoughtful simplicity of the work. Robert Nelson submits in response to a recent exhibition of similar works, 'everything is straightforward but also in denial, as if vacillating between abstraction and illusionistic spaceÉHickey has you guessing'1. Among Australia's most popular artists among institutions and private collectors, Hickey's work is represented in all the major galleries.ÊFor a thematically comparable work of the same period as Blue Table, see the artist's Night Table, 19902. 1 Robert Nelson, 'Dale Hickey', The Age, August 3 2005 2 Night Table illustrated in Dale Hickey: Life in a Box, exh. cat., The Ian Potter Museum, University of Melbourne, 2008, p. 7
• Estimate:
  A$20,000 - 30,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.