David Zwirner gallery has just informed us that French billionaire art collector Francois Pinault has purchased Décor by Adel Abdessemed, a work from the artist’s new show at the gallery that consists of four razor-wire sculptures of Jesus being crucified. The gallery also said that the show has largely sold out since opening on Friday, with prices for most pieces ranging between $800,000 and $2 million.
Mr. Pinault is a longtime supporter of the artist, who has shown his work at the collector’s Punta della Dogana museum in Venice. This summer, Décor will head to the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, France, where it will be installed near that museum’s Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, which itself features a rather severe crucifixion scene. The piece will then head to Paris to join a major survey of the artist at the Pompidou Center that opens Oct. 3.
Though a few editions of a video piece remain, and Mr. Abdessemed has decided to keep a Guernica-inspired taxidermy wall piece for himself, everything else sold, including a few marble editions of coup de tête, the larger-than-life statue of Zinedine Zidane head-butting Marco Materazzi. The works all sold to collectors in Europe, the U.S., and the Far East, said Zwirner director of sales Justine Durrett.
“It’s very important for us, as his New York gallery, to broaden the reach of his work to the U.S. audience, but also to the international audience,” Ms. Durrett said, “so we’re very pleased with how this show reached out to new collectors and placed his work in new collections.”
