CHRISTOPHER WOOL
UNTITLED (WEST TEXAS) (2009)
In the 1990s New York-based artist Christopher Wool first became known for his large-scale "Word Paintings", in which acrimonious commentaries and quotes from songs or movies were placed in black capital letters on white screens. What followed was a phase more focused on concerns immanent to the practice of painting, in which the US-American artists embarked on a deconstruction of the traditional methods of painterly image production. Alongside the permanent reflection on painting in light of technical media, Wool's œuvre also includes silk-screens and drawings. Furthermore, Wool expanded his artistic repertoire with contrasty black- and-white photography, in which – in analogy to his paintings, drawings and prints – a pertinent interest in matters of composition becomes manifest. His works have been presented in exhibitions worldwide; this year for instance at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne on the occasion of the prestigious Wolfgang-Hahn-Price awarded to Wool. For "Texte zur Kunst", Christopher Wool has produced an artist's edition, for which he for the first time ever turned to colour photography. "Untitled (West Texas)", 2009, shows a reclusive lieu in the likewise remote studio of Wool in Marfa, Texas, the myth-laden city in which Donald Judd lived since 1977 and – in the bright sun and against the endless horizon of the desert – set up his Marfa Foundation. Wool's colour photograph participates in both the myth of the "atelier du peintre" as an isolated site of retreat and that of the Texan desert, yet at the same time puts his banal and everyday motif in the tradition of deconstructing them, as for instance also advanced by Bruce Nauman with his recordings from his studio in the desert of New Mexico.
For „Texte zur Kunst", Christopher Wool has produced a colour photograph entitled "Untitled (West Texas)", 2009. The work measures 21,7 x 28 cm (with a motif size of 16,6, x 24,9 cm) and comes in an edition of 50 + 10 APs. It is signed and numbered on the back and costs 580,- Euro plus shipping.
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