ART & DESIGN

Sky High

by W Magazine

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Art-world heavies Tobias Meyer and Mark Fletcher make a striking statement with their 66th-floor apartment overlooking Central Park.

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s worldwide head of contemporary art, left, and Mark Fletcher, a private art consultant, in the eclectic Time Warner Center apartment Meyer describes as “Mark’s and my soup.” In their living room, a John Currin oil hangs above a French 1740s kingwood commode. A mural by Brazilian artist Assume Vivid Astro Focus covers the room.

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

A Warhol silk screen of a gun and a giant light-up dollar sign by Tim Noble and Sue Webster are the apartment’s twin icons, representing what Meyer calls the “two inescapable truths.” As Meyer explains, “Everything is about the reality of it all, about the human condition and facing death. Art right now is about desire, human nature, sexuality, power and violence.”

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

Their good friend painter John Currin describes the place as a “modern rococo fantasy” that reminds him of the Fragonard Room at the Frick Collection. Here, Liz Craft’s The Witch, cast bronze and glass, gazes out the window, at right. Furniture includes a Louis XVI bergère and early 19th-century Danish chairs.

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

A view out the windows overlooking the skyline, with a reflection of Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s light-up dollar sign.

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

The low-grade plywood that Fletcher found to line the entry hall sets the tone right away. “I like using low-grade materials, so things could change,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if there are nail holes in it. And there is a hopefulness to its unfinished quality. It’s an experiment, just as young art is an experiment.” A boldly striped carpet from Stark runs throughout the apartment. An untitled work by Nigel Cook hangs in the office.

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Photographs: Todd Eberle

Decorating a home of their own represented an opportunity to merge their sensibilities, Meyer’s historicist leanings with Fletcher’s contemporary passions. Here, a diptych from Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series hangs above a German 1760 gilt-wood console, with German rococo ormolu candelabra.