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Lot Essay
Rudolf Stingel's paintings evoke minimalist reflective surfaces and baroque ornamentation that reflect the mechanics of painterly creation. In 1989, his manual Instructions, revealing the step-by-step process of making "a Stingel," propelled his paintings into the realm of conceptual art. A few years later, in 1994, perhaps as a pendant to this statement, Stingel produced a Buddha sculpture holding different tools in each hand necessary to the composition of his visually complex paintings.
In Untitled (2012), background and foreground dissolve against layers of silver and red in which sit a diamond motif.Untitled is part of a series of canvases featuring traces of tulle fabric commonly used for bridal veils. Leaving sweeping marks on the silver pink base to smooth out its appliqu, the netting, once removed, reveals the vibrancy of a cardamom red motif over a delicate surface texture unique to Stingel. The tactility emerging from this process is central in the richness of Stingel's paintings and in many of his installations.
Reflecting the nature of canvas as a fabric, applied motifs of Stingel's work are often derived from tapestries, carpeting and, in this case, the light meshing and transparency of tulle. Stingel started using this particular fabric as a process for marking his paintings in the late-eighties. For these works, the artist specially manufactured the fabric to fit the scale of the 2012 series.
The pattern of diamonds, which can also take the form of hearts or circles in works of this type, is a playful reminder of the importance of the grid in the development of modernist abstraction. Transfer of geometrical structures derived from the decorative arts are built upon wet paint, creating levels of sheerness, and opacity. The series of tulle works also suggests "atmospheric" weather or "precipitation" within the lineage of German romantic painters.
The artist's use of gold and silver also common to many of his works comment on the glorification of iconic painting, while referring to the Baroque and the golden sepia hues or silver gelatin prints dating from early photography, in overlapping historical visual references.
Stingel is also acclaimed for his photo-realist paintings such as Untitled, (after Sam), 2005-6, presented at the Whitney Museum in 2007 based on photographs of the artist. For this solo exhibition, Stingel additionally placed silver panels visitors were invited to graffiti in the museum, evoking a combination of a baroque hall of mirrors and an eighties nightclub. These pieces, and Untitled, footprints onto a Styrofoam surface, mark the passage of time and transpositions from one space to another, of planes of horizontality and verticality where floor becomes wall. About this approach Gary Carrion-Murayari writes "For Stingel, painting is not just representational-it's always related to materiality and physical change within a temporal space. Stingel's paintings rely on and point to an expanded meaning of time." (Rudolf Stingel at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Hatje Kantz, 2007, p.112)
Stingel's works offer simultaneously the possibilities of aesthetic contemplation, the opulence of surfaces, emptiness and void. His mastery of repetition, wondrously reveals unique patterns and traces and what it is to make a painting.
In Untitled (2012), background and foreground dissolve against layers of silver and red in which sit a diamond motif.Untitled is part of a series of canvases featuring traces of tulle fabric commonly used for bridal veils. Leaving sweeping marks on the silver pink base to smooth out its appliqu, the netting, once removed, reveals the vibrancy of a cardamom red motif over a delicate surface texture unique to Stingel. The tactility emerging from this process is central in the richness of Stingel's paintings and in many of his installations.
Reflecting the nature of canvas as a fabric, applied motifs of Stingel's work are often derived from tapestries, carpeting and, in this case, the light meshing and transparency of tulle. Stingel started using this particular fabric as a process for marking his paintings in the late-eighties. For these works, the artist specially manufactured the fabric to fit the scale of the 2012 series.
The pattern of diamonds, which can also take the form of hearts or circles in works of this type, is a playful reminder of the importance of the grid in the development of modernist abstraction. Transfer of geometrical structures derived from the decorative arts are built upon wet paint, creating levels of sheerness, and opacity. The series of tulle works also suggests "atmospheric" weather or "precipitation" within the lineage of German romantic painters.
The artist's use of gold and silver also common to many of his works comment on the glorification of iconic painting, while referring to the Baroque and the golden sepia hues or silver gelatin prints dating from early photography, in overlapping historical visual references.
Stingel is also acclaimed for his photo-realist paintings such as Untitled, (after Sam), 2005-6, presented at the Whitney Museum in 2007 based on photographs of the artist. For this solo exhibition, Stingel additionally placed silver panels visitors were invited to graffiti in the museum, evoking a combination of a baroque hall of mirrors and an eighties nightclub. These pieces, and Untitled, footprints onto a Styrofoam surface, mark the passage of time and transpositions from one space to another, of planes of horizontality and verticality where floor becomes wall. About this approach Gary Carrion-Murayari writes "For Stingel, painting is not just representational-it's always related to materiality and physical change within a temporal space. Stingel's paintings rely on and point to an expanded meaning of time." (Rudolf Stingel at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Hatje Kantz, 2007, p.112)
Stingel's works offer simultaneously the possibilities of aesthetic contemplation, the opulence of surfaces, emptiness and void. His mastery of repetition, wondrously reveals unique patterns and traces and what it is to make a painting.