This year, days before the Dallas Contemporary Art Fair, MTV is staging an extravagant affair on April 8th. Texas glitterati will place their highest bids on a bevy of top notch artwork donated for HIV/AIDS. The project first began about five years ago when MTV's Staying Alive Foundation sought for new ways of raising money for a disease the remains the trickiest to generate financial support.
In a time when art auctions are too many to count, it's no easy feat to promise good quality work at a charity benefit. MTV and collaborators, Goss-Michael Foundation and Dallas Contemporary along with curator Neville Wakefield and auctioneer Simon de Pury, have put this challenge to the test by managing to secure works from from a stable of top tier artists, many of which are repeat contributors such as Marc Quinn, Taryn Simon, Sterling Ruby, and Damien Hirst, who recognize the importance of the foundation's efforts. Their work and that of sixty other artists are being silent auctioned on Paddle8.
Many of these artists, I have had the pleasure of working with in the past. Here are a few of my favorite picks:
-Emin Kadi creative director