Bharti Kher

44 BHARTI KHER The XIth Hour , 2009 bindis on painted board 33 x 33 x 5.5 cm (12 7/8 x 12 7/8 x 2 1/8 in) Signed, titled, dated and numbered 'The XIth Hour, 2009 Bharti Kher 16/25' on the reverse. This work is number 16 from an edition of 25. ESTIMATE £3,000 - 5,000 ♠ PROVENANCE Private Collection, London Contact Specialist Request Condtion Report Recieve Email alerts View catalogue Purchase catalogue Annual subscriptions

23 BHARTI KHER An Absence of Assignable Cause, 2007 bindis on fiberglass 173 x 300 x 116 cm (68 1/8 x 118 1/8 x 45 5/8 in) This work is number 1 from an edition of 3 unique variations. ESTIMATE £150,000-250,000 ♠ PROVENANCE Jack Shainman Gallery, New York Acquired from the above in 2007 EXHIBITED New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, Bharti Kher: An Absence of Assignable Cause , 15 November – 22 December 2007 London, Serpentine Gallery, Indian Highway , 10 December 2008 – 22 February 2009, then travelled to Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (2 April – 23 August 2009), Hernig Museum of Contemporary Art (13 March – 12 September 2010) (another example exhibited) London, The Saatchi Gallery, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today , 29 January – 8 May 2010 Kunstmuseum Thun, Susan Hefuna, Bharti Kher, Fred Tomaselli: Between the Worlds , 1May– 27 June 2010 (another example exhibited) Lille 3000, The Silk Road , Saatchi Gallery Collection, 20 October 2010 – 23 January 2011 LITERATURE Indian Highway , exh. cat., London: Serpentine Gallery, 2009, p. 109 (another example illustrated) The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today , exh. cat., London: The Saatchi Gallery, 2010, p. 142 (illustrated in colour) The Silk Road, Saatchi Gallery Collection , exh. cat., Lille 3000: Lille, 2011, p.53 (illustrated in colour) Conditions of Sale The property is being sold as a collector’’’’s item to be displayed only. It has been partially deconstructed and therefore its physical integrity may be compromised. It is not intended for road use and is not being sold as a means of transportation. Certificate of Title A certificate of title may be necessary in order for the purchaser to acquire marketable title to the property and would be required if the property were to be used as a motor vehicle within the United States of America. Phillips makes no warranties or representations in connection with any existing vehicle regulation or certificate of title or with the issuance of any new certificate of title by any state of the United States or any foreign government. The purchaser of any property who intends to use such property on the road is solely responsible for complying with all applicable Federal and state regulations regarding title, registration, insurance, licensing, emission control, safety equipment and roadworthiness. Please contact a specialist for more information. 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No warranties are or will be made that any of the property is roadworthy or complies with any applicable governmental rules, regulations or ordinances of any kind or nature whatsoever. The benefits of these Conditions of Sale are not assignable and shall be applicable only to the original purchaser of the lots and not subsequent assigns, purchasers, heirs, owners or others who have or may acquire an interest in the purchased lot. Prospective purchasers should carefully inspect the property before bidding in order to identify any issues relating to condition or description that may have not been described in the catalogue, including repairs and restorations. Phillips makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of “mileage” or odometer readings. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the purchaser’’’’s role and exclusive remedy against Phillips and the seller, in place of any other remedy which might be available, is the cancellation of the sale and the refund of the original purchase price paid for the lot. Neither Phillips nor the seller will be liable for any special, incidental or consequential damages including, without limitation, loss of profits, nor for interest. Place Bid Bidding Method In Person Absentee Phone Bid Live Online Contact Specialist Request Condition Report Receive Email alerts “In the art of Bharti Kher, the bindi that Hindu women wear on their foreheads becomes a motif that links tradition and modernity, East and West.” PERNILLA HOLMES An Absence of Assignable Cause is a mesmerising work by Bharti Kher who is ... Read More... View catalogue Annual subscriptions

BHARTI KHER (B. 1969) Border in Red signed, dated and titled 'Bharti Kher 2009 BORDER IN RED' (on the reverse) bindis on aluminium panel 59½ x 65½ in (151.1 x 166.4 cm.) Executed in 2009 Gallery SKE, Bangalore PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION Bharti Kher began working with bindis in 1995 after what she has described as a 'supernova' moment of revelation when she came across a woman in India wearing a serpent shaped bindi on her forehead. A powerful representation of an old India now undergoing rapid change and modernisation, this ancient symbol of beauty, marital status and spiritual awareness applied to their foreheads daily by millions of women across the subcontinent, immediately suggested itself as a rich and appropriate tool for her art. In this piece, the free flowing bindis seem to invoke a sense of migratory flow in which constellations slowly appear and then fade away to create a complex and cosmic-looking matrix on the board. In projecting the bindi on such a brightly articulated and elaborate scale, Kher privileges the questions of identity, gender and race within the globalising environment. She gently subverts the bindis original associations, deconstructing their religious context and creating an abstract work of aesthetic beauty. At the same time she offers the viewer a moment of almost spiritual contemplation and meditative peace.

Lot Description Bharti Kher (b. 1969) An Absence of Assignable Cause bindis on fiberglass 68¼ x 109¼ x 45¾ in. (173 x 300 x 116 cm.) Executed in 2007. This work is number two from an edition of three unique variations and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist. Provenance Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris Exhibited New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, Bharti Kher: An Absence of Assignable Cause, November-December 2007. London, Serpentine Gallery; Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art and Hernig Museum of Contemporary Art, Indian Highway, December 2008-September 2010, p. 109 (illustrated, another example exhibited). London, The Saatchi Gallery, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, January-May 2010, p. 142 (illustrated, another example exhibited). View Lot Notes › Magnificent abstract designs created by bindis swirl together to form the extraordinary textured surfaces of Bherti Kher's An Absence of Assignable Cause (2007). A frontrunner of Indian contemporary art, Kher is internationally acclaimed for her decorative use of the bindi, the traditional Indian representation of the third-eye. In an exhibition assuming the same title as the present lot, Kher's signature material is explained: "Kher plays on the role of the bindi in contemporary art. Mass-produced stick-on bindis are the low-brow versions of the Bindu (with a capital B), a conceptually loaded aesthetic and spatial device, valorized and self-Orientalized by modern Indian artists and architects. Kher's use of pedestrian bindis is an intellectual and cultural inversion of the mythology of the modern Bindu. By repeating the bindi endlessly and using it in subversive ways to cover surfaces that range from rexine (imitation-leather) carpets and broken cups to fiberglass animals and hybrids Kher pokes fun at the transcendent potential of the hallowed Bindu." (K.K. Agrawal, The In-Between Worlds of Bharti Kher, An Absence of Assignable Cause, exh. cat., Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Nature Morte, New Delhi, 2007.) Accentuating the undulating curves of the two-chambered heart, veins, and arteries of the blue-sperm whale, the bindis swirl together to create a marvelous surface simultaneously reminiscent of both cloth and membrane. A recurring theme in Kher's work, animals serve as a metaphor for the body and transformation. Described as "a hunt for the chimera," Kher, unable to find sufficient scientific documentation of the anatomy of the blue-sperm whale, invented the appearance of the colossal mammal's heart based on loose sketches. Absence of Assignable Cause at once prompts nautical fantasies while reminding us of the proximate threat of extinction. A negotiation between old India and the present, Kher's totemic sculpture embellishes allegories that simultaneously belong to a distinctly Indian tradition whilst being undeniably new.

8 BHARTI KHER Twins, 2011 Bindis on painted board, in two parts 24 x 48 in. (61 x 121.9 cm) This work is unique. ESTIMATE $60,000-80,000 PROVENANCE Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Place Bid Bidding Method In Person Absentee Phone Bid online Receive Email alerts I am interested in the idea of the monster, the hybrid, the contradicting identities. — Bharti Kher (Holmes, Pernilla. “Connecting the Dots,” Art News . April 2009. pp. 96-101.) View catalogue Annual subscriptions