Amie Siegel
Donation to MAK, Vienna
During the spring and summer of 2015, Amie Siegel’s three-part installation Provenance was on display at the MAK, Vienna. The exhibition and the acquisition of the entire work for the museum’s permanent collection were both made possible in cooperation with Phileas. Other editions of the same work have been purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Amie Siegel’s works move between film, installation, photography, and performance. With Provenance the artist achronologically tracks the journey of furniture designed by Pierre Jeanneret: From the home of private collectors in London, Paris and Antwerp, to auction houses to restoration workshops and back to their origins in Chandigarh – Le Corbusier’s controversial planned city in India.
In the main film the objects become the protagonists of a design tale that traces an arc from nostalgic imaginations of modernity to questions about provenance and value in the contemporary art world; including the speculative art market. Themes such as historicity, grand narrations and the recontextualization of then furniture and now high value design objects are discussed in a silent dialogue between the contemplative close-ups of the objects and the spectator of the film.
Two additional works accompany the main film: The video Lot 248 (2013) shows the sale of Provenance at a Christie’s London auction and thus documents the work of art as an element in the circuit of art, design, and capital. Siegel accentuates this infinite loop through Proof (Christie’s 19 October, 2013) (2013), the printer’s proof of the auction catalogue for the film Provenance, which today, in turn, is represented in major international contemporary art collections. The artist’s gesture of encasing her auction catalogue page in Lucite, a transparent acrylic glass, gives Proof yet another “gilding”.
Amie Siegel’s work has been shown at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Hayward Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; and the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Most recently, she received a Sundance Institute Film Fund award and the inaugural Forum Expanded award at the Berlin Film Festival, both for Provenance.
DONATED ARTWORKS
Provenance, 2013
HD video, color, sound
40’ 30”
Edition 1 of 5 +2APs
Lot 248, 2013
HD video, sound
5’ 27”
Edition 1 of 5 +2APs
Proof (Christie’s, 19 October, 2013), 2013
Ink jet print, Lucite
25.5 x 18.5 in.
Edition 1 of 5 +2APs
