Sculptures that take ‘two forklifts’ to move mysteriously vanished. Art now found; no arrests yet
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The two towering sculptures comprising thousands of pounds of bronze and stainless steel took artist and filmmaker Daniel Winn more than a year to complete.
They vanished in a weekend — and have reappeared one weekend later.
Police believe that on June 14 or 15 at least one thief made off with both “Icarus Within” and “Quantum Mechanics: Homme” — sculptures valued at a combined $2.1 million — from a warehouse in Anaheim Hills. Other artwork and valuables inside the warehouse that would have been easier to move were untouched.
Police recovered the stolen art pieces inside a trailer parked at an Anaheim resident’s driveway Friday night, The Times confirmed. Police said they were able to locate the sculptures thanks to tips from community members.
No one has been arrested for the heist as of yet. According to Anaheim police, investigators are still working the case.
The life-size “Quantum Mechanics: Homme” artwork, composed of lucite, bronze and stainless steel, depicts a winged and horned man and was featured in the award-winning short film “Creation” in 2022. It’s valued at $1.8 million.
A second Winn piece, “Icarus Within,” based partially on the sculptor’s chaotic childhood escape from Vietnam, is a steel and bronze sculpture that also stands 8 feet tall, weighs a ton, and is valued at $350,000.
Both sculptures were being stored in a temporary facility and were last seen by warehouse workers in Anaheim Hills on June 14, according to the Anaheim Police Department.
When the workers returned to the facility Monday, both pieces were missing, according to police.
Winn said he believed the pieces might have been stolen by an unscrupulous collector. An art recovery expert suspected the two sculptures might wind up destroyed for scrap metal.
That did not come to pass.
Glenn Steven Bednarsh is accused of knowingly buying a stolen Andy Warhol artwork valued at an estimated $175,000 and trying to sell it to an auction house.
“Typically these sculptures, when we do exhibitions, take about a dozen men and two forklifts to move it and a flatbed or a truck to carry it,” Winn said. “This is not an easy task.”
Winn told The Times that the last few days had been stressful and that his anxiety was “through the roof.” Winn is considered a blue-chip artist, meaning his work is highly sought after and has a high monetary value.
The former UC Irvine medical student, who was once homeless after switching his major from medicine to art, said he blends fine art, quantum metaphysics and philosophy into his work.
The Vietnamese refugee owns the Winn Slavin Fine Art gallery on Rodeo Drive and was appointed earlier this month as art commissioner for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.
The loss of his art pushed Winn “to a dark place,” he said, though he said he found some catharsis in talking about the situation.
“These are my children,” he said of each of his individual works. “I have no physical, organic children. Every artwork I create is my child.”
The larger of the two sculptures, “Homme,” was the seventh and only unsold work in Winn’s Quantum Mechanics series, which explores philosophical concepts, universal truths and tries to answer the enduring question: Why are we here?
The smaller “Icarus Within” focused on Winn’s struggle around the age of 9 in emigrating to the United States in the final days of the Vietnam War. The sculpture was tied to Winn’s movie “Chrysalis,” based on his memoirs, that is supposed to premiere in the fall.
Laguna Beach artist Christiana Lewis Ulwelling was reunited with her large-scale painting ‘Elevate’ a decade after it was reported stolen. She is now working on a series of paintings to have an open conversation about addiction.
Winn said the level of sophistication in the theft led him to suspect he was targeted and that his pieces might be on the black market.
He turned over a list of individuals who had recently inquired about his sculptures to police, he said.
Matt Sutter, the Anaheim police sergeant, said this was the largest burglary he’d seen in his 25 years with the department.
“We’ve had our share of high-end homes that were burglarized, but this type of crime, involving forklifts, trucks, crews and the sheer size of the sculptures is something I can’t remember us having before,” Sutter said.
Prior to the recovery of the art, Sutter said investigators asked businesses near the warehouse for any footage that could help them identify a suspect.
The theft of hundreds of bottles of wine from an L.A. shop — including about 75 priced upwards of $1,000 — is the latest of several high-profile crimes targeting the industry.
Chris Marinello, founder of the dispute resolution and art recovery service Art Recovery International, said a likely scenario was the sculptures would be scrapped for their metals.
Marinello said scrap yards tear apart such works into thousands of small pieces to cloak the metal’s origin.
“Unfortunately, the criminals are not that bright and they don’t see artwork but, instead, a sculpture worth millions that is more valuable to them for the raw metals like steel and bronze,” Marinello said.
Marinello pointed to a two-ton Henry Moore bronze sculpture, known as “The Reclining Figure,” stolen from the artist’s foundation in Hertfordshire, England, in 2005.
The piece was valued at 3 million pounds, but authorities believed it was scrapped for just 1,500 pounds.
“You can’t sell sculptures of this magnitude on the market,” Marinello said of the Winn’s stolen pieces.
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