A sublime and poetic meditation on the nature of painting, Untitled is a luminous example of the conceptual and aesthetic concerns that have directed Rudolf Stingel throughout his career. Executed in 1990, the present work evokes the rosy glow of sunrise seen through a hazy mist, as soft washes of pigment shimmer across the surface. Fascinated by the mesmeric materiality of painting, Stingel developed a unique applicative process that imbues the surface with an elusive complexity. His technique involves the layering of thickly applied oil paint, tulle netting, and enamel. When the netting is peeled away after the final layer has been applied, the surface takes on the textured appearance of the tulle. This distinctive method of mark-making blurs the direct gesture of the artist’s hand in a challenge to conventional notions of painting, and acts as a continuation of Stingel’s Instruction series, critiquing notions of expression and authenticity through process and material use. It is characteristic of Stingel that even as he critiques the medium, he simultaneously celebrates its visual pleasures. Untitled is thus emblematic of a body of work that is both pioneering and visually breathtaking.

Stingel’s work is complex, in that it refers to many art-historical legacies, often with disparate aims and ideologies. Emerging in the New York art world in 1987, Stingel began his work in a moment dominated by a dichotomy of aesthetic movements: Neo-Expressionism, which emphasized the presence of the artist’s hand in the creation of the work, and Minimalism, which stressed the removal of any evidence of the artist’s hand in the creative process. While he eschewed siding with any one school, the artist incorporated elements of both into his work. In Untitled, Stingel integrates the reproductive quality of Warhol’s Factory with a textural exploration and emphasis on gesture more akin to that of the Abstract Expressionists. The work further draws allegiance to the painting of Gerhard Richter, especially his Abstrakte Bilder, through Stingel’s focus on contingent mark making and the inherent qualities of paint. That Stingel’s oeuvre is suggestive of such titans in the art-historical canon is indicative of the intellectual and conceptual virtuosity of his work.

In Untitled, Stingel encourages the viewer to forgo traditional categorizations of medium and style and instead consider the work from a conceptual point of view. The viewer’s contemplation is then thrown back at them as the glittering surface of the work reveals glimmers of their quivering reflection. Curator and art critic Massimiliano Gioni writes that “Stingel has sought to strike a balance between conceptual rigor and the retinal sensuality of painting, between detachment and participation, even between decorativeness and mental purity. His art embodies the paradox of loving painting but wanting to destroy it – or, in any case, to bend it to serve new and unexpected purposes” (Massimiliano Gioni cited in: ‘The People’s Painting: How to Understand Rudolf Stingel’s Crowdsourced Magnum Opus’, Artspace Magazine, January 2016, online). Untitled is an extraordinary example of Stingel’s transformation of painting into a theoretical meditation on artistic production while championing the idiosyncratic aesthetic for which Stingel became famed.

Artist

Rudolf Stingel