ZILIA SÁNCHEZ | Topología erótica

Private Collection, Miami (a gift from the artist) 
Private Collection, Miami (acquired from the above) 

This work is in very good condition overall. The colors are vibrant, and the media layer is stable. A few very faint handling marks are present at the extreme upper left edge of the far left panel. A very fine two-inch vertical dark surface scratch is present at the extreme upper left corner of the center-left panel. One isolated faint fingerprint is present in the center-right panel, 12 inches from the protruding element. Slight relaxing to the canvas, which is consistent with the age of the work and the artist's working method, is present on some panels. The wooden structure is sound, and the canvas is secure. The work is ready to hang.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

“If Eros, in the classic psychoanalytic framework, is a drive constitutive of the subject – Eros as life, as love, as the instinctual impulse toward creativity and self-realization – it is also a structure of experience, which is to say a sensation embedded in the specificities of aesthetic and bodily encounter. Sánchez’s extraordinary shaped canvases tell us as much. Stretched taut over wooden armatures, their membranes painted in neutral tones that pool into nested ovoids, ellipses, clefts, and half-moons, the works oscillate between inciting and reciprocating desire. The desire of the artist who, molding a work’s skeleton and then manipulating its tensile skin, treats it as a corpus, an organic entity with formal and emotive energies of its own. And the desire of the viewer, whose motility in relation to the canvas causes its abstracted shapes to expand, contract, slide, dilate, and bloom.” Irene V. Small, “On Zilia Sánchez’s Surface” in Zilia Sánchez, Heróicas Eróticas en Nueva York, New York, 2014, p. 5