Phillips de Pury held the last of the evening contemporary art sales last night at its Chelsea headquarters, where there was a touch of celebrity excitement. Hip-hop mogul P. Diddy was seen milling in front of the adjacent Milk Gallery, and model Stephanie Seymour — ex-wife to the lead singer of Guns N’Roses, Axl Rose — sat to watch the bidding. Most of the attendees, though, were focused on the sale, which featured works by recently exhibited artists such as Barnaby Furnas and Karen Kilimnik.

The final sale price of the auction was $29,692,400 (with a final hammer price of $25,791,000 million). Mike Kelley’s mixed media installation “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites” (1991–99) — the work with the highest estimate of the night — sold for a hammer price of $2.4 million, well under its estimate of $3 million. Andreas Gursky’s two-print photograph “99 Cent II Diptychon” (2001) brought in the second-highest hammer price of the night at $2.2 million.

The auction hit a nervous point when the sale for Charles Ray’s “Revolution Counter-Revolution” (1990), a woodenand-steel sculpture of a carousel, was reopened after an original pass at $1.2 million. It quickly sold to a buyer in the audience for a hammer price of $1.4 million.

Despite the low nature in prices during the auction, many pieces sold well over their highest estimates. Auctioneer Simon de Pury seemed giddy during the night’s first sale, Mark Handforth’s fluorescent light-installation “Starman” (2004), which sold at $95,000. It was estimated $30,000. Banks Violette’s steel sclupture “Untitled (Scoreboard)” (2005) also fetched exceeded its estimate, selling for $98,000.

Uptown, at Christie’s day sales of postwar and contemporary art, the morning sale brought in $51,221,200 and the evening sale, $25,068,800. The Philips de Pury auction continues today.