Scott Kasen

Works From The Collection Of Scott Kasen

Photo courtesy Scott Kasen

Daniel Lefcourt, "Added Value" (2006) (back view)

Photo courtesy of Scott Kasen

Daniel Gordon, "Deprong Mori" (2006)

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“A lot of what motivates me isn’t just collecting,” he says. “It’s the act of discovery. To stumble across artists at a point in their careers when they are relatively unknown and to watch them evolve over the years is very fulfilling—particularly if you have a personal connection.”

To deepen his involvement in the art workd, Kasen has recently set up Kasen Editions (KED), which he describes as “a way to share a passion of mine with friends and associates, and at the same time to offer exposure to the artist.”

KED Editions will offer an ongoing series of original, limited-edition works. Daniel Lefcourt’s Added Value was the first to appear earlier this year.
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My First Acquisitions: I recall purchasing my first works maybe 12 years ago: two small abstracts by an artist named Andrew Kennedy. At that time I don’t even think he had a gallery, so maybe I saw them in his apartment. Back then, I was drawn to Mark Rothko, and one of these works by Kennedy was sort of a Rothko-type piece, or it read in that manner to me. The other was a color-field-type work on a wood block.

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My Most Recent Acquisition: I purchased some photographs by a recent graduate of Yale by the name of Daniel Gordon. I saw a work of his in a group show last summer, and I wanted to purchase it, but I couldn’t reach a meeting of minds with the gallerist. (It’s funny; later, by coincidence, I happened to meet Gordon at the Columbia MFA Show.)

Then, Zach Feuer decided he was going to show him, and Daniel did a body of work that Zach brought with him to Art Basel, and I purchased a few of the pictures from that [series]. They cost between $1,500 and $4,000.
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My Favorite Work: I tend to like conceptual-based art where an idea’s being conveyed, and also I like humor and irony. I obviously have many favorites, but one is the “Wanted” poster that Lucian Freud made to try and get his [tiny oil-on-copper] portrait of Francis Bacon back [stolen from a traveling exhibition at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 1988].

I was lucky enough to secure one of these posters by some crazy means, and I like the story that goes along with it. It turns out that in Germany, there’s a statute of limitations on stolen art, and the statute of limitations was expiring just at the time the posters were put up, so the person [in possession of the stolen portrait] wouldn’t have been held accountable for any criminal offence if he came forward to return it.

So that poster’s kind of a favorite, just for what it says about the concept of putting up a wanted poster and offering a reward for a piece of stolen art. It’s obviously of historical significance, and then there was the relationship between Bacon and Freud. The poster wasn’t editioned, of course, but people collect posters, and once a poster’s been posted, it’s very difficult to remove, so I enjoy this piece on many levels.