David Salle (b.1952)
Bench with Pencils
2003
Wood and iron bench with No. 1 pencils
Signed and dated on backrest
31.5 x 48 x 23 in / 80 x 122 x 60 cm
David Salle’s created his “Bench with Pencil” for the Target Benchmarks Central Park fund-raising event to benefit the Central Park Conservancy and to commemorate the Park’s 150th anniversary. held at Christies New York commemorating the Park's 150th Anniversary. 53 ordinary park benches were transformed by New York’s preeminent artists, designers and architects. In addition to David Salle, artists James Rosenquist, Jenny Holzer, Joel Shapiro, Kenny Scharf, Ross Bleckner, and Donald Lipski created benches for the project; as did architects Michael Graves and Charles Gwathmey; and fashion designers Diane von Furstenberg and Nicole Miller. New York celebrities including Liza Minelli, Signourney Weaver, Joan Rivers, and the cast of Saturday Night Live also supported the endeavor by designing benches for the event. During a gala evening, Regina Peruggi, president of the Central Park Conservancy and trustee Candice Bergen presided over an auction that raised $400,000 for the ongoing care and preservation of the Park.
In his paintings, prints, and sculpture, David Salle is known for mixing modes of representation and appropriated ready-made motifs in a single canvas, suggesting but defying any legible narrative. Salle's paintings and prints comprise what appear to be randomly juxtaposed and multilayered images, or images placed on top of one other with deliberately illogical techniques, in which he combines original and appropriated imagery. He often includes images from popular culture, cartoon figures, historical objects, and elements from well-known paintings. Salle’s paintings are seen as metaphors of the dizzying onslaught of media culture.
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