Louis Wessendorff

Out of place, 2026

Medium: Egg tempera and Caparol on canvas
Dimensions: 60 × 50 cm
Highest pre-bid: €3,400

In Out of place, Louis Wessendorff brings comic-like objects, figures and pictorial signs into an arrangement in which individual elements appear familiar while their relationship to one another remains uncertain. His wider practice draws on a personal vocabulary of images and symbols, playing with our instinct to recognise, categorise and construct meaning from what we see.

The title turns this visual uncertainty into a question of position. Something can be entirely recognisable and still appear not to belong because it has been removed from the context in which we expect to encounter it. Being ‘out of place’ therefore describes more than physical displacement: it reveals how strongly our understanding of belonging depends upon existing systems of order and the expectations attached to them.

Within Negotiating Belonging, Wessendorff’s work asks who – or what – determines where something belongs. Context can make the unfamiliar legible, but it can equally make the familiar appear strange. The work exposes belonging as partly constructed through the categories with which we organise the world, suggesting that what appears misplaced may tell us as much about the structures doing the placing as about the thing that supposedly does not fit.

Place a pre-bid

This work already carries a pre-bid of €3,400. To take the lead, bid at least €3,600.

The highest pre-bid becomes the price this work opens at on 4 October. If no one in the room bids higher, it is yours at that price.

You can also set a maximum. It stays private. If someone bids against you, we raise your bid for you, one step at a time, never above your maximum. If someone goes past it, you are out and we email you so you can bid again. On the day you can always keep bidding in the room, beyond your maximum if you wish.

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Your bid, in euros At least €3,600: the highest pre-bid is €3,400 and bids on this lot go up in steps of €200. Your maximum, in euros (optional) The most we may raise you to if others bid. Only used if you are outbid; nobody sees it.

My bid is binding. If I enter a maximum, I am also bound at any amount up to it that the system raises me to when others bid. If I am still the highest bidder on 4 October and no one in the room bids more, the work is mine at that price under the Conditions of Sale.

You will see a reference number straight away and get a confirmation by email. Bids go up in fixed steps: €50 below €1,000, €100 to €2,000, €200 to €5,000, €500 to €10,000, €1,000 to €20,000, then €2,000. If two maximums are equal, the earlier bid keeps the lead and the other bidder is told at once so they can go one step higher. If someone pre-bids above you, or the room goes above you on the day, you are released and owe nothing, and we email you the moment it happens. We use your details only to process your bid and, if you win, to complete the sale. The work goes under the hammer at Negotiating Belonging, 4 October 2026, Juntos House, Ibiza.