Rudolf Stingel

Sadie Coles, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2013

This work is in excellent condition overall. There is evidence of light handling and wear along the edges of the canvas. Under Ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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"Beauty, humor, euphoria, a democratic slant and a resolute sense of economy form the core of Mr. Stingel’s art. He combines a love of painting with the postmodern suspicion of it, and often achieves a near-perfect balance between the visual and the conceptual." Roberta Smith, 'DIY Art: Walk on It, Write on It, Stroke It,' The New York Times, June 29, 2007

Rudolf Stingel's grandly-scaled work on canvas, Untitled, is an uninterrupted expanse of painterly abstraction that epitomizes the definition of what it means to paint in the modern day. Filling most of the canvas’s expanse lie layers upon layers of black charcoal paint that ultimately forms a muted yet majestic monochromatic pattern of nuanced textures and tones. As Chrissy Iles has rightly described: “Stingel’s approach to surface is always paradoxical…he is…deeply interested in its seductive, tactile quality” (Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art (and travelling), Rudolf Stingel, 2007, p. 24).

An Italian-born artist living in New York, Stingel is an innovative voice in the world of contemporary painting. Throughout his career Rudolf Stingel has been able to successfully incorporate a highly conceptual aspect to his materials and process-based practice. His preoccupation with what painting is and what it can achieve has taken him to challenge every assumption or theory about the medium. Having started his career at a time where painting’s end had been declared, Stingel followed his own direction, becoming part of a generation of artists who instead of abandoning the medium decided to explore it further. Like Sigmar Polke, Stingel has used every material imaginable in his works, from the most traditional to the most unorthodox. Like Gerhard Richter, he has distilled the very essence of painting, the sensuality of the medium and its theoretical aspects. With Untitled, as with the rest of his works, Stingel “demonstrates an acute awareness of the aspirations, failures and challenges to Modernist painting, while at the same time expressing a sincere belief in painting itself, focusing on formal characteristics including color, gesture, composition, and, most importantly, surface” (Gary Carrion-Murayari, "Untitled," Rudolf Stingel, 2008, p. 112).

The present painting, completed in 2007, is linked to many of the artist's other works of the past decades. Beginning his career as a painter, and staking a claim in the territory of monochromatic painting in the 1980s, Stingel has since begun incorporating other approaches and media as well, including installation, sculpture, and interaction. Stingel began interrogating not just the picture plane, but also its surrounding environment, which later led to several transformative installation works that experiment with architectural space. The artist has used materials ranging from paint on canvas to printed carpet and silver metallic Celotex insulation boards to upholster floors and walls of exhibition spaces and consequently inviting visitors to leave their own marks on the easily-impressible surfaces.

As exemplified by the vibrating tension evident in Untitled, Stingel's work plays with optical illusion, the use and disruption of monochromatic surfaces and architecture. Using repeating patterns to emphasize spatial orientation (and at time, disorientation), Stingel evokes an uncanny sense of graphic movement and visual distortion. "For Stingel, painting is not just representational - it's always related to materiality, and physical change within a temporal space. Stingel's paintings rely on and point to an expanded meaning of time." (Gary Carrion-Murayari quoted in Exh. Cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art (and travelling), Rudolf Stingel, 2007, p. 112)