Rudolph Stingel

From his captivatingly realistic oil paintings to his innovative use of Celotex, Styrofoam, carpet, and aluminum, Rudolf Stingel challenges traditional notions of what constitutes a painting. Often dealing with subjects of time, memory, and perception, he embraces industrial materials and ornamental design as vehicles for formal exploration and provoked coincidence, whereby the final state of certain installations is determined by the participation of the viewer.

Born in Merano, Italy, Stingel grew up in the Tyrolean Alps, a mountainous region where Austria, Italy, and Switzerland meet. In 1989, he completed Instructions, a limited-edition manual explaining (in several languages) how to make one of his silver paintings, abstract canvases with undertones of red, yellow, or blue. In 1991, Stingel installed a bright orange carpet in Daniel Newberg Gallery, activating the space in an unprecedented way. Two years later, at the Biennale di Venezia, Stingel installed a red-orange carpet on the wall, further commenting on the power of display. And in 2004, his site-specific installation Plan B incorporated Stingel’s career-long interest in patterns and repetition, covering the floors of Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall in industrially printed pink and blue floral carpet. In 2001, for his solo exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy, Stingel lined every available surface of one of the rooms of the museum with metallic Celotex insulation board and visitors drew, wrote, and made imprints on the surface of the reflective silver paneling. Stingel repeated this participatory installation at the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); Palazzo Grassi, Venice, (2006); and at his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, later that year. Stingel’s series continue to build upon and depart from one another, expanding definitions of art and authorship along the way.

Source: Gagosian