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Christopher Wool — "I am an abstract painter. I am interested in visual language. It’s not easy to put words to it.” Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool

"I am an abstract painter. I am interested in visual language. It’s not easy to put words to it.” Christopher Wool

A commanding grid of bold, stencilled black letters fills the aluminium surface, fragmented and compressed into dense, wall-like blocks of text that challenge the viewer to decode their meaning. Wool's signature use of industrial enamel on metal strips the work of painterly warmth, lending it a stark, graphic urgency that hovers between image and language. The words themselves — a painter's confession of the limits of verbal expression — become an ironic visual object, embodying the very tension they describe.

Medium
enamel on aluminium

🔨 Auction Lot

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

February 14, 2013

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About this work

Christopher Wool, "I am an abstract painter. I am interested in visual language. It’s not easy to put words to it.” Christopher Wool

A commanding grid of bold, stencilled black letters fills the aluminium surface, fragmented and compressed into dense, wall-like blocks of text that challenge the viewer to decode their meaning. Wool's signature use of industrial enamel on metal strips the work of painterly warmth, lending it a stark, graphic urgency that hovers between image and language. The words themselves — a painter's confession of the limits of verbal expression — become an ironic visual object, embodying the very tension they describe.

Medium
enamel on aluminium
Seen at
Phillips, New York, London, Hong Kong

Related themes

Monochrome, Conceptual, American, Text, Abstract, Enamel On Metal, Contemporary

More works by Christopher Wool

Collected by

Hamilton Selway Gallery, Alex Capecelatro, Lisa Rembrandt