LEVERAGE -
MAURA BREWER
October 19th - November 16th, 2024
Between 2013 and 2019, Daniel Sundheim, billionaire investor and trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, filed 12 loan documents with the New York Secretary of State.1 These loan filings provide a window into Sundheim’s spending habits: he was using his art collection as collateral for loans, which he used to buy more art, which, in turn, became collateral for more loans, and so on–collateral, loan and asset feeding into each other in a self-reinforcing loop. Opening at Timeshare on October 19th, Leverage presents a new video-essay and series of drawings by Maura Brewer. Leverage is the first chapter in an ongoing project that traces the history of the financialization of art. The work is a portrait of Daniel Sundheim, a prominent investor and art collector, told through the story of art-backed loans. Set against the backdrop of the current art market downturn, Leverage is also a story about debtors and creditors, interest rates, international fugitives and transactional friendships.
Maura Brewer is a video-essayist who makes work about art, money and crime. Brewer is a Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Lens Award at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her work has been shown internationally at venues including MoMA, Art in General, the MCA and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and her projects have received press coverage in outlets including The Paris Review, The Guardian and CBS News. Brewer received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2011 and was a Whitney Independent Study Program fellow in 2015. In addition to her art practice, Brewer works as a private investigator at Lynx Insights and Investigations in Los Angeles.
1. The loan documents are called Uniform Commercial Code filings, they are publicly available records that
document a debtor’s collateral assets. These filings are often used to secure art-backed loans, providing a
public record of collateralized artworks that can be claimed if the debtor goes into default.
WORKS LIST:
1. Leverage, 2024.
Video installation, color, sound. TRT 18:27 min.
Sound design and music composition by Michael Webster.
Voice-acting by Clara Baxter; hand-acting by Daniel Ingroff, Amir
Nikravan and Pau S. Pescador. Many thanks to Dorene Quinn,
Adam Wyatt Tate, Inès Kivimäki, Andy Bennet & Colleen Hargaden.
Borrowed footage from the following films: The Wolf of Wall
Street, Wall Street, Beaches and Rich and Famous. Borrowed
ideas from the following books: David Graeber’s Debt: The First
5,000 Years, Isabelle Graw’s On the Benefits of Friendship and
Greta Krippner’s Capitalizing on Crisis.
2. Ronald Lauder / Bank of America N.A., Uniform Commercial Code
Filing No. 200604105339156, April 10, 2006, New York
Department of State, Double Marlon, Andy Warhol 1966, 2024.
Pastel on paper, 20” x 25”
3. Peter Norton / Christie’s Inc., Uniform Commercial Code Filing
No. 201108310471724, August 31, 2011, New York Department of
State, Chiho Aoshima, Matthew Barney, Mark Bradford, Sophie
Calle, etc., 2024.
Pastel on paper, 20” x 25”
4. Ronald Lauder / Christie’s Inc., Uniform Commercial Code Filing
No. 200605190427172, May 19, 2006, New York Department of
State, Vasily Kandinsky, August Macke, Joan Miro, Constantin
Brancusi, 2024.
Pastel on paper, 20” x 25”