The art market is quite literally a market place, where investors buy and sell artworks with profit as their motive. For an art lover, it is somewhat strange for me to think art about it this way, but I understand how the market works and appreciate that when you are spending an extraordinary amount of money on something, you'd like to think that it will hold it's value or even better, appreciate in value over time.
Collecting takes a keen eye and an understanding of the artists place in societies present discourse. Our team wants to take the guess work out of collecting - by working with legendary & innovative contemporary artists, we offer an authentic collecting experience for first time buyers and collectors alike.
Most well known (for now at least) from our portfolio is Michael Goldberg (1924-2007). Goldberg was a generation younger than the core group of New York School painters--Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning - and while he was frequently classified as a second-generation member of this illustrious group, this designation referred more to the artist's age than the quality of his paintings. Goldberg's ouevre is characterized by only one constant: nimble, improvisational reinvention. While he remained deeply committed to abstraction, over the course of his long career -from the 1940s until his death in 2007 - Goldberg reconceptualized the visual, aesthetic and material boundaries of abstract painting.
Over the past 5 years, Goldberg's work has been selling for record prices at auction. In 2008 an Untitled piece from 1956
(above left) sold for a whopping $208,000 USD at Christies in NYC. That same year, The Keep - painted in 1958
(above right) sold for $183,000 USD.
Our creative team originated in New York City and comprises of artists, critics, historians and academics with a common love of all things art, and a passion to make art accessible to everyone. We have been able to work with the Estate's of artists like Michael Goldberg and others who love art and who would like their work to be available to people with a more modest budget. Our pieces are for those of us who are interested in buying art that not only speaks to them, but art that will be a worthwhile investment for the future.
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This simple (albeit made up) example of a visual algorithm shows how an image can be created using the same self-imposed, predetermined sets of rules or algorithms used in the mathematical calculations that drive things like computer programs.
When combined with an artist’s hand and a certain amount of unpredictability, generative art can produce some stunning results.
TWFA’s Briony Barr has collaborated with physicist Andrew Melatos in Drawing on Complexity, an initiative that creates ‘art experiments’ in the form of large-scale, rule based floor drawings made by groups of participants using colored electrical (PVC) tape.
Barr and Melatos invite external participants to create a drawing based on a set of devised rules. The artists do not direct the drawing process, instead they let the participants (agents) create the artwork just as much as the rules they are following. Over time, the interactions between the agents and the rules accumulate to create ripple effects that feed back into the artwork (or system) changing it's course. This happens over and over again, making the drawing complex and unpredictable.
The artists document their work in time lapsed video with a written account of the project that is then uploaded to their website. This month the pair coordinate Drawing/Undrawing at NGV community hall in Melbourne. Stay tuned for future projects and be sure to check it out and contribute!
Below is the pairs documentation for Experiment #4 at the National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seoul.
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Experiment #4
Duration: 5 hours
Agents: 24
Size: 12 x 12 m
Location: The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
Date: 2013
The drawing was structured using an underlying pencil grid, providing two ways for the different agents to move around; on top of the lines articulating the grid (S1) or inside each grid square (S2). In phase one of the drawing, we allowed agents to have only four ‘children’ (four collaborations) before moving on. In phase two, agents working together were allowed to combine their genetic material as many times as they wanted. This rule variation resulted in many agent duos choosing to have rather a lot of ‘children’. In almost every drawing experiment we see this tendency towards the most efficient way of doing something. In the case of Experiment #4, working as a couple over a longer period of time, repeating the same act, means better strategies can be developed for getting things done (i.e. making a collaborative drawing). This is common sense and also a fundamental tendency of nature; to take the most energy efficient route.
