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Lot Essay
Christopher Wool has quickly emerged as one of the most important abstract painters of his generation, perfecting his craft since his first experimentations in the 1980s. Wool's early techniques involved stencilled rollers, showing his main interest in paint application; in the late 1980s he transitioned to using rubber stamps and stencilled words. In shifting away from the ready-made implications of the rollers Wool explored the additive and repetitive nature of stamping patterns. In the early 1990s, Wool abandoned the use of rubber stamps and rollers in favour of the silkscreening process, yet continued to embrace the stylistic effects of his prior techniques, repeating decorative floral motifs to blur the lines between ornamentation and abstract painting. In King Walk, Wool has moved to yet another modus operandi, perhaps the most mature method of his career to-date. He draws large gestural swirls on the linen with a spray gun, and then wipes the paint and the linen with a cloth soaked in solvent, removing the paint to create strokes and blurred patches of grey tones across the canvas.
King Walk is a term from chess, referring to when the king, typically a piece kept protected and in reserve, is actively deployed and moved up the board to participate in the attack against the opponent. This is a rare tactic because of the difficulty of pulling it off, but has featured in several well-known, high profile modern chess games. In the context of Christopher Wool’s painting, it can be read as referring to the artist’s approach to painting as a kind of endgame. Yet, one which is both aggressively fought and which can be extended indefinitely. In the early 1980s in New York at a time when many perceived painting as embattled in a fight against photography, whose tactics of appropriation, reference, and reproducibility seemed, to many critics to make photography superior to painting. Yet, Wool took this as an opportunity to produce a subversive art where some of these same issues are juxtaposed with the open question of the status of the artist. However, his iconoclastic nature and presence in the downtown scene of 1980s New York, where he befriended notable punk and no wave figures like Richard Hell, led him to also be interested in graffiti, which was just one of the marks of urban space that Wool captured in his ongoing photographic projects.
Wool once declared, "I became more interested in 'how to paint it' than 'what to paint'" (C. Wool, interview with A. Goldstein in A. Goldstein (ed.), "What They're Not: The Paintings of Christopher Wool," ed. A. Goldstein, Christopher Wool, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1998, p. 256); and King Walk demonstrates Wool's progress in continuing to explore the endless ways to create painting. This spray paint series lends itself to the creation of strong yet balanced compositions, creating multi-layered and intense works through the removal of paint. Wool has explored the dynamic between depth and flatness, foreground and background since the 1980s. King Walk and the corresponding series address the exploration of this tension in its truest form - Wool creates the depth himself in the removing of paint layers, rather than allowing the flat black and white images-as seen in both his floral and text series-to create only the illusion of depth with the viewer.
The work draws on a concept found in Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing 1953; both artists engage in the unconventional act of un-making art in order to make art. Wool adds thick layers of paint and then partially removes and digs into these layers to create a multi-layered and intense work. He explores the true nature of the physicality of the act of painting, the gestural movements of the arms and hands as an extension of the painting tools, a key concept in the Abstract Expressionist movement, particularly in the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. Both Wool and Rauschenberg partake in the unconventional artistic act of removal and redacting, an act not often associated with painting and drawing. Rauschenberg erases completely a drawing by another artist, whereas Wool's deliberate removal of the paint has created an entirely new image from this redaction. With Rauschenberg as a pioneer of the concept, Wool wipes the paint off the surface of King Walk, and makes the work precisely by unmaking it.
King Walk is a term from chess, referring to when the king, typically a piece kept protected and in reserve, is actively deployed and moved up the board to participate in the attack against the opponent. This is a rare tactic because of the difficulty of pulling it off, but has featured in several well-known, high profile modern chess games. In the context of Christopher Wool’s painting, it can be read as referring to the artist’s approach to painting as a kind of endgame. Yet, one which is both aggressively fought and which can be extended indefinitely. In the early 1980s in New York at a time when many perceived painting as embattled in a fight against photography, whose tactics of appropriation, reference, and reproducibility seemed, to many critics to make photography superior to painting. Yet, Wool took this as an opportunity to produce a subversive art where some of these same issues are juxtaposed with the open question of the status of the artist. However, his iconoclastic nature and presence in the downtown scene of 1980s New York, where he befriended notable punk and no wave figures like Richard Hell, led him to also be interested in graffiti, which was just one of the marks of urban space that Wool captured in his ongoing photographic projects.
Wool once declared, "I became more interested in 'how to paint it' than 'what to paint'" (C. Wool, interview with A. Goldstein in A. Goldstein (ed.), "What They're Not: The Paintings of Christopher Wool," ed. A. Goldstein, Christopher Wool, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1998, p. 256); and King Walk demonstrates Wool's progress in continuing to explore the endless ways to create painting. This spray paint series lends itself to the creation of strong yet balanced compositions, creating multi-layered and intense works through the removal of paint. Wool has explored the dynamic between depth and flatness, foreground and background since the 1980s. King Walk and the corresponding series address the exploration of this tension in its truest form - Wool creates the depth himself in the removing of paint layers, rather than allowing the flat black and white images-as seen in both his floral and text series-to create only the illusion of depth with the viewer.
The work draws on a concept found in Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing 1953; both artists engage in the unconventional act of un-making art in order to make art. Wool adds thick layers of paint and then partially removes and digs into these layers to create a multi-layered and intense work. He explores the true nature of the physicality of the act of painting, the gestural movements of the arms and hands as an extension of the painting tools, a key concept in the Abstract Expressionist movement, particularly in the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. Both Wool and Rauschenberg partake in the unconventional artistic act of removal and redacting, an act not often associated with painting and drawing. Rauschenberg erases completely a drawing by another artist, whereas Wool's deliberate removal of the paint has created an entirely new image from this redaction. With Rauschenberg as a pioneer of the concept, Wool wipes the paint off the surface of King Walk, and makes the work precisely by unmaking it.