Christopher Wool

Luhring Augustine, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in April 1993

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling to the edges of the aluminum. There is a minor abrasion to the surface of the enamel approximately 16 inches from the left edge and 9 inches from the bottom. Under ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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As represented by Untitled (S112), Christopher Wool continually subverts the conventions of painting by successfully addressing the interrelation of abstraction and figuration. Composed in a characteristic array of black stamped patterns co-mingling on a stark white surface, Wool has stripped down the essential facets of painting to engender a union of process with picture making. The inception of Wool’s pattern paintings, a group to which the present work belongs, came in 1986, when Wool was simultaneously influenced by the appropriative techniques of his peers Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine, and the urban vernacular of New York City. Inspiration struck when Wool observed workmen using incised paint rollers with a variety of geometric and organic designs as an economic alternative to wallpapering the hallways of tenement buildings. Wool quickly reconditioned their preexisting blossom and vine designs into a visual repertoire that fluctuates between abstraction and figuration.

After exploring the potential of the incised rollers, Wool began incorporating rectangular rubber stamps into his artistic process in 1988, which allowed him to engage with more intricate forms and silhouettes. Wool continued to explore the creative possibilities of the stamps while participating in a yearlong artist residency from 1989-1990 at the American Academy in Rome. The stamps proved to be a more pliable artistic tool which allowed Wool to gradually steer away from archaic decorative patterns into less-regimented elements and figurative imagery. While in Rome, Wool executed a series of works on paper using a stamp in the form of a heraldic bird, which would become one of the most instantly recognizable motifs in Wool’s oeuvre. The present work incorporates both this iconic aviary form as well as a sinuous vine design which Wool re-fashioned from one of his favorite rollers. These particular vine stamps, as well as Wool’s early experimentation with layering effects, were both utilized in one of the artist’s most complex and celebrated paintings from this era, entitled Riot, which was executed in the year prior to Untitled (S112).

The present work is condensed to the limited monochrome palette of rich black and white enamel applied to the weighty surface of an aluminum ground, while the act of densely layering forms makes for a composition that is fully dynamic. The slick black-and-white aesthetic Wool adopted as his signature style evinces an ongoing negotiation with and reconsideration of the history of abstract painting and painterly process. Beginning in the 1980s, Wool scrutinized the role of painting from within the medium itself by creating bodies of work that were inherently self-reflexive and deeply aware of art historical convention. Wool’s black and white paintings are evocatively multifaceted yet reductive of tradition: heavily influenced by the ‘allover’ compositional strategy of Jackson Pollock; the minimal palette, line and gesture of Brice Marden; and Andy Warhol’s recapitulation of found imagery, pictorial repetition and integration of mechanical methods. The flair of Wool’s unique artistic vocabulary stems from a conflation of the varied language of post-war American art and the cool reproduction of wallpaper design and stenciled street graffiti. The multifaceted surface of Untitled (S112) recalls the peeling layers of posters and graffiti that Wool encountered plastered across the abandoned walls of New York City’s Bowery and the billboards and bathroom walls of the infamous CBGB and Mudd music clubs.

Comprising a condensation of Wool's painterly syntax, Untitled (S112) is archetypal of the artist’s inquiry into the destruction of the conventions of painting. In a progression started with the roller and rubber-stamp paintings, through to the stenciled text pictures and the most recent corpus of silkscreened gestural abstractions, Wool has explored a mutating, visually arresting landscape of seemingly mechanical, cipher-like reductions; coolly detached and emptied of heroic angst. Untitled (S112) masterfully pairs drastic urgency with Wool's cool and utterly inimitable detachment. As elucidated by Katrina M. Brown: "Wool controls the chaos, to offer us a kind of primary viewing, the image as a pre-linguistic, pre-thought means of communicating. With their grand scale, bold unapologetic presence and their stark black and white confidence, Wool's paintings seem like an indescribable urban cool, a tense fusion of intellect and emotion, control and chaos" (Katrina M. Brown, Contemporary Magazine, Winter 2003, cited in Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Christopher Wool, New York 2008, p. 296). In his pattern paintings, Wool recontextualizes the aesthetic tradition of decorative symbols by stripping them of their original aesthetic intent and incorporating them into a contemporary artistic discourse. Wool’s obfuscation of Untitled (S112)’s surface and varied use of two of his most important motifs lends the present work a level of aesthetic complexity and conceptual interrogation rarely seen in his early pattern paintings.