Bukowskis presents Starn Twins at Contemporary Art & Design
Mike & Doug Starn (Starn Twins)
”Untitled, Bodhisattva #1”
Ever since the 1980s, American twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn have explored photography as a medium and tested its limits. Their conceptual pieces often have a photograph as their starting point, which is then transferred to unusual materials such as glass, plastic film, scotch tape, sheet metal or hand-crafted paper. Their images are sometimes created like collages, constructed in several layers and held together with, for example, pins. “We’re trying to show that photography isn’t an image; it’s a three-dimensional object”, they’ve explained. “It can have the same kind of growth and limitations or non-limitations as the other arts.” This innovative exploration of material has, in some ways, become the trademark of the Starn Twins, whether it be sculpture, painting, video or photography. The notion of light remains a theme throughout their practice as both an idea and an expression. The work can be about the way moths are attracted to a flame, the way light sifts through the branches of trees, or about religious enlightenment.
› Signed verso. Edition 1/1. Colour carbon print (watercolour pigments and gelatin) on Zerkall paper with 16K gold and palladium leaf water gliding, 197 x 161 cm, including wooden frame. Estimate 180 000 – 200 000 SEK.
The twins’ artistic collaboration began when they were only thirteen years old, and at age twenty-six, they had their breakthrough at the Whitney Biennial in New York. Since then, they have caught the art world’s attention with their exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the 2011 Venice Biennale, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, amongst other places. Since the early 2000s, the Starn Twins have regularly shown their work at the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, most recently with the exhibition Iggy and Franz in the summer of 2019.
Today, their work can be found in, for example, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
To be sold at Contemporary Art & Design
Viewing October 21st – 25th, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Auction Live October 26th, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm
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