Lot 102: OLIVER LARIC

Wu Tang Guilloche Rodin
This work is unique.

205 x 125 cm (80 3/4 x 49 1/4 in)

tamper evident security hologram stickers on PET (polyethylene terephthalate) sheet, airbrushed clear coating

2012

Tanya Leighton, Berlin
Acquired from the above by the present owner

"I don’t see any necessity in producing images myself – everything that I would need exists, it’s just about fnding it." Oliver Laric

The young Berlin-based artist Oliver Laric belongs to a generation that is intensely engaged in social media, search engines, and other powerful offerings of the world wide web. The visual material, from images of high art to throwaway personal content, Laric fnds on the internet is recycled and appropriated for a new narrative that refects the dot-com culture we live and work in now.
Wu Tang Guilloche Rodin (2012) is one of a small number of hologram pieces which Laric no longer makes in this form, and of which the present lot is a particularly unusual and important example. For these works, the artist has covered the surface with custom-made holographic stickers, in this case depicting The Thinker by Auguste Rodin. Laric designed these stickers himself and had them produced in Shenzen in China, a region known for the manufacture of both authentic and fake products. These holograms, widely used to certify the authenticity of o£en high-value goods, carry intricate guilloche patterns that can be found in paper money, visas and credit cards. Using such patterns, Laric plays on the paradoxical nature of original and copy, and real and fake, a condition that is becoming ever more prevalent in the age of the internet and the digital.

Oliver Laric has recently been honoured with the prestigious Annual Award from the Contemporary Art Society in London. The prize will fund a new work by Laric for The Collection and the Usher Gallery, Lincoln.