This magnetic composition stems from a period in Christopher Wool’s practice when he began to use his previous creative output as the source material for new, autonomous paintings.
This magnetic composition stems from a period in Christopher Wool’s practice when he began to use his previous creative output as the source material for new, autonomous paintings. The feverish energy of the web of red lines belies the fact that it has been stitched together from screen-printed segments of an earlier whorl of spray paint, resulting in a cruciform dissection of the canvas. Wool then applied a further layer of visual dissonance by roughly abrading the central area with a palette knife while the ink was still wet, although recycled and original gestures intertwine to the point that the chronology of making the work becomes inscrutable. Both a haunting of the expressive hand and a violent erasure of it, Untitled (2001) exemplifies the simultaneous embrace and repudiation of painterly agency that galvanizes Wool’s work.
This magnetic composition stems from a period in Christopher Wool’s practice when he began to use his previous creative output as the source material for new, autonomous paintings.
This magnetic composition stems from a period in Christopher Wool’s practice when he began to use his previous creative output as the source material for new, autonomous paintings. The feverish energy of the web of red lines belies the fact that it has been stitched together from screen-printed segments of an earlier whorl of spray paint, resulting in a cruciform dissection of the canvas. Wool then applied a further layer of visual dissonance by roughly abrading the central area with a palette knife while the ink was still wet, although recycled and original gestures intertwine to the point that the chronology of making the work becomes inscrutable. Both a haunting of the expressive hand and a violent erasure of it, Untitled (2001) exemplifies the simultaneous embrace and repudiation of painterly agency that galvanizes Wool’s work.