Rudolf Stingel

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008

This work is in very good condition. All surface markings are intentional and inherent to the artist's working method. Framed. The colors in the catalogue illustration are accurate, although the illustration fails to convey the reflective and aluminum feel of the work.
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"Stingel’s work traffics in the stylistic markers of Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism. But he reduces those markers to features of ordinary experience and leaves the animating theoretical and expressive impulses of both movements behind.” Jonathan Gilmore, 2000

Untitled was created soon after Stingel's 2001 installation at the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy, which was one of the first notable installations in which he completely covered the interior space of a gallery with Celotex insulation panels. The malleability of these silver insulation panels allows Stingel to mold every surface of an interior, creating a shimmering, bewildering space in which the edges, corners and contours of the room are diffused and made immaterial. Walls were clad in this surface creating a spectacular silver room that gleamed with light ever reflecting off its surfaces. One is reminded of the cool splendor of Warhol’s factory resplendent with silver covered walls. Stingel subverts the traditional qualities of painting through his use of reflective material. If a painting's surface traditionally features the mark of the artist, then Stingel's paintings (for the Celotex works are described as "paintings") do the opposite. Because of its reflective sheen, the Celotex resists the gaze, reflecting one’s gaze back at us, so that one becomes aware of our own presence in the face of such a surface. Over the course of the exhibition of such an installation, viewers begin to inscribe and draw into the surface of the surface, transforming an elegant pristine space into a site of cacophonous scrawls and graffiti. Instead of presenting the artist's singular expressive gesture, the works depict the mark of the other, so that the viewer becomes etched upon the surface of the painting. If Stingel's Celotex panels indicate a painting transformed, they might also illustrate a painting destroyed, by the nature of the audience's interaction with the piece. It is hard to think of a more destructive, unholy act than the willful slashing of a painting's pristine surface. Yet Stingel’s work elevates the scratching and drawing of the viewer above the status of vandalism into something of great value. Stingel privileges the anonymous gestures of the viewers of his installation and exalts them to equal status with the decision making of the artist. Absorbing influences as varied at the photographs of graffiti by Brassai or the elegant poetry of Cy Twombly’s gestures in Untitled, 1970, Stingel allows the viewer to participate in the creative process of painting resulting in a radically new interpretation of painting that speaks with a harrowing universality. Instead of privileging the mark of a single individual, the surface of this painting collects the gestures of thousands of different viewers. In shifting some of the burden of artistic labor from himself toward the public, Stingel is directly confronting the romantic attitude towards the painterly gesture. The accumulation of marks made by the mass of visitors pushes Stingel’s painting towards an unprecedented universality. This painting exposes us to the archetypal and most primitive but essential creative act that man has repeated since the beginning of time: scratching and drawing on the wall, be it a cave or a surface of Celotex.

The present work was part of a larger initial installation. One of Stingel’s primary concerns has been in dissolving the relationship between a painting and the architectural space of its exhibition. The silver clad rooms have been part of this exploration, expanding the painting surface beyond its accepted parameters, across walls, and onto floors and ceilings. The work in question is evidence of his interest and demonstrates Stingel’s choice and authorship being reasserted upon the seemingly crowd produced work.  Stingel’s work speaks about the passage of time, moving beyond representation or the photographic towards the cinematic. Every mark that accumulates on the surface, etched by the crowds of visitors, is an explicit testament to this passage of time laid bare by Stingel for us to revisit and reflect upon as our own presence shimmers in the surface of the work.