Galerie Max Hetzler / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2007 With a text by Friedrich Meschede
‘Since 2001 his works seem to try and wipe out everything that preceded them. Pictures of nothingness. If the word paintings were marked by pitch-black forms that appeared haptically modelled from printer’s ink, Christopher Wool now uses the physical dissolution of colour for his compositions. With a colourless solvent, he thins the paint paste down to a liquid consistency that he blurs even further into the transparency, as if he wanted to erase whatever still remains visible. Behind this process of erasure and dissolution is a gesture which could suggest to the viewer that Christopher Wool was acting with a certain amount of aggression, as if in denying to paint a readable picture he wanted to quickly and immediately wipe away any possibility of an idea behind the image at all. The process of painting becomes an eloquent expression of erasure, and the areas of obliteration evident in every part of the painting simultaneously become the expression of an attitude – to make something visible invisible.’ F. Meschede, ‘The nothingness before nothing’, in Christopher Wool, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2007, p. 34
Publisher: Galerie Max Hetzler / Holzwarth Publications Text: Friedrich Meschede Publication date: 2007 Binding: Hardcover Dimensions: 31.6 x 30.3 x 1.1 cm Pages: 39 ISBN: 978-3-935567-42-8
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A central tenet of Christopher Wool’s (b. 1955) practice is the very process of painting itself. This has been explored and developed since his early years through reducing form and colour, as well as experimenting with different painting styles and reproduction techniques, such as silkscreen or pattern rollers, overlaying and erasing, covering or obscuring with paint, and adding layers on top. The range of techniques Wool has used over the years makes reference to the processes and gestures that have marked contemporary art history. The artist’s complex work encourages the viewer to reflect on the physical qualities of paint and various modes of reproduction, while honing an awareness of painting procedures and the essential elements of the medium: colour, form and line. ‘Christopher Wool’s paintings seem to capture visual urban experience, carved out of a moment for the duration of an artwork – an artwork that coverts the structures of experience into the structures of painting. Non-specific moments and impressions are lifted out of context and fixed into details of a painting that, unlike graffiti, conveys the speed and concentration of its origin only when it is contemplated over a measure of time in an art space. The dynamic of the picture’s conception becomes, very gradually, the dynamite of the thought it contains. Thought pictures.’ F. Meschede, ‘The Nothingness before nothing’ in Christopher Wool, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2007
Artist page on maxhetzler.com
(catalogue)
Zimmerstraße 90/91, Berlin-Mitte
2007
Exhibition page on maxhetzler.com
Paintings: Zimmerstraße 90/91, Berlin-Mitte Photographs:
Holzmarktstraße 15-18, Berlin-Mitte
2002
