Lot 38: UWE KOWSKI (B. 1963) Boot signed and dated ’Kowski 07’ (lower right); si

UWE KOWSKI (B. 1963) Boot signed and dated ’Kowski 07’ (lower right); signed, titled and dated ’U. KOWSKi BOOT 2007’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas 78æ x 94Oin. (200 x 240cm.) Painted in 2007

PROVENANCE: Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig/Berlin. Acquired from the above by the present owner. ’The way we perceive the world, is the way we infuence it. I see that in reference to economic interests and their consequences, to the latest technological developments, you could say. That development goes and has always gone along with a change of perception, or which knowledge we give priority to, what we learn from that and what kind of development we pursue. In this respect complexity in perception is dificult, too. It requires willingness to look precisely in lots of directions... The translation of perception is the determining aspect for an artist. Sure, you can try not to let perception enter your work, but you cannot detach from perception. There are diferent ways to a transformation within my work. I mean that sometimes a result is achieved faster and sometimes it is a long process. Complexity in this case means that the seen merges with diferent thoughts into an image. This process often lasts while the painting develops.’ –U. KOWSKI Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie fourishes in creating civic works that critique urban landscapes whilst simultaneously perpetuating temporary change. Born and raised in Glasgow, a city that had been ravaged by de-industrialisation and urban decay, McKenzie borrows stylistic and aesthetic anachronistic modes found in catalogues and books to highlight societal issues and implement nostalgic utopias. Her site-specifc works, which pictorially recall such diverse styles as East European propaganda, avant-garde abstraction, Art Nouveau architecture, 1920s fashion and 1980s pop music, are immersive and relational, and unveil contemporary issues in social structure. Working with close friend Paulina Olowska, born in turbulent post-war Poland and consequently also witnessing seismic societal changes, McKenzie treats her ’source material as refections of social reality – particularly gender issues – and of the changes that have taken place in the art world over recent decades, often so inconspicuously that they initially went unnoticed’ (Stephan Urbaschek, quoted in Hold the Colour: Paulina Olowska/Lucy McKenzie, exh. cat., Sammlung Goetz, Munich 2007, p. 46). The two works on ofer here perceptively fuse a careful stylistic selection of source material with an engagingly social imperative. Co?Në, McKenzie’s proposal to Düsseldorf Kunstverein’s request for a piece of public art, takes the form of a cartooned vintage advertisement, humorously scrutinising the role of women in advertising. A scantily-clad young woman dances with a group of smartly dressed males, her lace-like underarm hair streaming impossibly into the mouths of the spellbound men. The eponymous, brashly nonsensical advertising slogan punctuates a neutral background above an illustration of roll-on deodorant. The work, stylistically referencing the fat graphic design of Polish Modernism, is outdated in its illustrative scheme, yet strangely alien and otherworldly in its content. Whilst the advertisement’s narrative is immediately evident, the work is implicitly a challenge to urban development. The ’advertisement’, unfamiliar in its otherworldliness, was intended to be positioned on a wall in a newly gentrifed harbour, opposite a vogueish bar. Surveying the public surroundings, McKenzie openly and surrealistically ironizes the attitudes towards women in commercial media whilst conjuring an anachronistic alterity in an area of inexorable change. Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska opened a temporary artists’ bar in Warsaw in 2003. An underground venue which illegally sold alcohol and hosted avant-garde concerts and performances, Nova Popularna was a hip hangout for Warsaw’s creatives, who journeyed to the saloon for good company and cheap drinks. Nova Popularna had an artistically bespoke interior, with McKenzie and Olowska designing and ftting everything themselves, from the bar and curtains to the installation of modifed second-hand furniture, sculpture and murals. Nova Popularna was the bar’s visual centrepiece, a diptych loosely mirroring a scene of leisure. Recalling the graphic design of 1920s Art Nouveau, angular geometrical shapes dance in an ambiguous fusion of fguration and abstraction, with the light and breezy palette complementing the jazzed arrangement of the forms. Whilst the life of the bar itself may have been short-lived, McKenzie and Olowska’s rhythmically animated mural ensures its legacy is immortalised. Lucy McKenzie & Paulina Olowska Artist Spotlight: