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Lot Essay
With its luminous reflective surface, imbued with lyrical abstract patterns, the present work is a monumental apparition that extends the aesthetic of Rudolf Stingel’s celebrated silver paintings. Weaving together multiple strands of art-historical lineage—from Gerhard Richter’s painterly abstractions, to the monochromatic surfaces of post-war Italian art and the material concerns of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg—this body of works confronts the viewer as near-architectural constructs, caught somewhere between painting, printing and sculpture. Growing up between the Italian province of Tyrol and Vienna, Stingel was exposed to a fusion of Baroque and Rococo visual languages at an early age. The present Untitled combines vast scale and intimate detail, placing it in dialogue with these ornamental traditions, conjuring a fragment of a fresco or a piece of decorated ceiling.
Throughout his oeuvre, Stingel has sought to redefine the picture plane as a material surface, rather than as a field of representation. His unique method was first documented in his 1989 book Instructions, which provided a step-by-step guide to producing his paintings: paint was applied to canvas in thick strokes; gauze or tulle was then strategically placed upon the canvas before further layers of paint were added using a spray gun. The result was iridescent layering of muted color, in which the undercoats of paint glimmered through the overlying metallic sheen, creating an almost classical illusion of glowing three-dimensional space. Stingel’s ironic attempts to codify his own methodology is redolent of Andy Warhol’s aspirations towards formalized factory-style reproduction; yet, in Untitled, the poetic diffusion of patterns and textures re-inscribe the trace of the artist’s hand. As Massimiliano Gioni writes, “Stingel has sought to strike a balance between conceptual rigor and the retinal sensuality of painting, between detachment and participation, even between decorativeness and mental purity. His art embodies the paradox of loving painting but wanting to destroy it – or, in any case, to bend it to serve new and unexpected purposes” (M. Gioni, quoted in Artspace.com Magazine). In the present work, Stingel asks us to abandon traditional categories of medium and style, presenting us instead with a seductive, ephemeral object that quivers with hints of our own reflection.
Throughout his oeuvre, Stingel has sought to redefine the picture plane as a material surface, rather than as a field of representation. His unique method was first documented in his 1989 book Instructions, which provided a step-by-step guide to producing his paintings: paint was applied to canvas in thick strokes; gauze or tulle was then strategically placed upon the canvas before further layers of paint were added using a spray gun. The result was iridescent layering of muted color, in which the undercoats of paint glimmered through the overlying metallic sheen, creating an almost classical illusion of glowing three-dimensional space. Stingel’s ironic attempts to codify his own methodology is redolent of Andy Warhol’s aspirations towards formalized factory-style reproduction; yet, in Untitled, the poetic diffusion of patterns and textures re-inscribe the trace of the artist’s hand. As Massimiliano Gioni writes, “Stingel has sought to strike a balance between conceptual rigor and the retinal sensuality of painting, between detachment and participation, even between decorativeness and mental purity. His art embodies the paradox of loving painting but wanting to destroy it – or, in any case, to bend it to serve new and unexpected purposes” (M. Gioni, quoted in Artspace.com Magazine). In the present work, Stingel asks us to abandon traditional categories of medium and style, presenting us instead with a seductive, ephemeral object that quivers with hints of our own reflection.