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Christopher Wool — “Is it a painting or a process?....You take color out, you take gesture out --- and then later you can put them in. But it’s easier to define things by what they’re not than by what they are.”  Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool

“Is it a painting or a process?....You take color out, you take gesture out --- and then later you can put them in. But it’s easier to define things by what they’re not than by what they are.” Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool's enamel on linen work confronts the viewer with the raw tension between image and method, stripping painting down to its most elemental decisions. The cold precision of industrial enamel applied to the organic weave of linen embodies Wool's signature push-and-pull — a practice built on subtraction, negation, and the gradual reintroduction of what was deliberately removed. In defining painting by what it refuses to be, Wool transforms absence itself into a generative, almost philosophical, artistic force.

Medium
enamel on linen

🔨 Auction Lot

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

May 14, 2015

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About this work

Christopher Wool, “Is it a painting or a process?....You take color out, you take gesture out --- and then later you can put them in. But it’s easier to define things by what they’re not than by what they are.” Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool's enamel on linen work confronts the viewer with the raw tension between image and method, stripping painting down to its most elemental decisions. The cold precision of industrial enamel applied to the organic weave of linen embodies Wool's signature push-and-pull — a practice built on subtraction, negation, and the gradual reintroduction of what was deliberately removed. In defining painting by what it refuses to be, Wool transforms absence itself into a generative, almost philosophical, artistic force.

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

Related themes

Enamel On Linen, Minimalist Aesthetic, Male Artist, Urban Influence, Conceptual Art, Cerebral Mood, Contemporary Artist, American Artist, Large Format, Late 20th Century, Neo-Conceptualism, Monochromatic, Abstract, Text-Based Art, Neo-Expressionism

More works by Christopher Wool

Collected by

Hamilton Selway Gallery, Alex Capecelatro, Lisa Rembrandt