Lot
30
Prague Assortment
Ink on paper, 2003
28 x 38 cm
Estimate
$700
I made Prague Assortment in a little house in Prague that was not really near anything. A collection of bits and pieces, indiscriminate, floating together. Art Nouveau wavy hair, a sentry box from the castle, figurines from some collection or other, tambourines from the tiny toy museum. There is cigar smoke of course, because they still smoke like it was 1899 in Prague. The sandwich could be from anywhere but not the monkey I bought—old and quite big with fully articulated limbs. I still have it.
Biographical note
Adrian Norvid was born in the U.K. and currently lives and works in Montreal. His production focuses on immersive drawn environments with large-scale drawings, paper constructions, and modified found objects. Norvid’s concerns centre on popular imagery, the vernacular, and kitsch with sources ranging from psychedelia to Georgian-era illustration. Recent shows include Finkola/The Cantankerous Krank and Wrongo at Joyce Yahouda Gallery in Montreal; Dummkopf at Galerie Julia Garnatz in Cologne, Germany; Goodnight Irene (with Jason McClean) at Jessica Bradley Inc. in Toronto; the Montreal Triennial; and Showstoppers, Whoppers, Downers and Out of Towners, an exhibition travelling to the Art Gallery of Windsor, The Rooms in St. John’s, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and the McIntosh Gallery in London, Ontario. In 2011 Norvid launched his first book, Nogoodniks, with the publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Adrian Norvid’s works are in the collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, la collection Prêt d’œuvres d’art du Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec, and the Colart Collection.