"Publicly I would probably insist on labeling the work abstract...but for me they are 'pictures' with all that that implies...and that often means that 'things' are pictured... but things can be psychological or sensed or dramatic as well as just a figure in a landscape."
D eletion, destruction and abandon are the hallmarks of Christopher Wool’s highly unique process of image-making, and Gloria September 27th stands as a superb test.mes nt to the artist’s recurrent oscillation between negation and affirmation, doing and undoing, doubt and determination. As an extension of Wool’s dynamic series of abstract monochrome paintings which he began in the early 1980s, Gloria September 27th embodies the artist’s investigation into the complexities of chance, indecision and erasure.
Considered one of the leading artists of his generation, Christopher Wool recreates in Gloria September 27th the pandemonium faced by one of the worst storms to ever hit New York City. Referencing the precise date that the storm made its landfall in the city—triggering the first closure of the NYSE in almost ten years and the first ever provoked by a hurricane—the artist captures an event that now appears to be pressing against the surface of the canvas. Working with different tonalities of gray in varying gradients of transparency, Wool recreates the uneasy texture of tumultuous clouds while fabricating the impression of humidity patterns spreading across the linen. The painting gives the impression of having captured the storm, while now being affected by its entrapment. The voracious energy inhabiting the canvas, threatening to escape into our world, showcases the confrontational and brazen style of Wool’s “pictures”, achieving a representational scene of rapacious chaos through the visual means of abstraction.
