Rudolf Stingel

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2000

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling to the sides and edges of the canvas. Under ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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"For Stingel, painting is not just representational - it's always related to materiality, and physical change within a temporal space. Stingel's paintings rely on and point to an expanded meaning of t.mes ." Gary Carrion-Murayari (quoted in Exh. Cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art (and travelling),  Rudolf Stingel, 2007, p. 112)

Executed in 1997, Untitled powerfully epitomizes Rudolf Stingel’s innovative practice that has been described by Francesco Bonami as one that can “redefine what painting can be, what it has been, what it is” (quoted in Michelle Grabner, "Rudolf Stingel," Frieze, April 2007, Issue 106, online resource). The work’s striking green surface, with its highly textured, thickly impastoed areas immediately triggers thoughts about how it came into being: paint, in a bright emerald hue has been exuberantly pressed, dragged and smeared across a pure black surface, and it is this highly sensuous quality of Untitled that places it at the very centre of Stingel’s practice. As Chrissy Iles has rightly described: “Stingel’s approach to surface is always paradoxical…he is…deeply interested in its seductive, tactile quality” (Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art (and travelling), Rudolf Stingel, 2007, p. 24).

Born in Merano, a small town in South Tyrol, Stingel arrived in New York in the early Nineties, causing a stir with his debut show at the Daniel Newburg Gallery. There, the artist covered the gallery’s entire floor with a dazzling orange carpet and visitors were invited to step on it, inevitably changing its surface, their footprints becoming part of the work. Stingel later famously revisited this idea in several occasions; in 1993, for example, a large area of carpeted wall was displayed at Aperto 93—a section of the Venice Biennale that showed emerging talents—and in 2007, for his mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and The Whitney Museum in New York, large expanses of each museum’s galleries were covered in aluminum where visitors could touch, write and scrape off the surface and leave their mark on the work. In these and other occasions the viewer was given the chance to reflect on the process of making and to inhabit the artist’s position. Similarly, when standing in front of Untitled, the mind wanders into the artist’s studio, each energetic gesture performed mentally, every swab, every peak, every trough repeated again until the entire surface is covered in raging emeralds.

This performative, interactive aspect of Stingel’s work is summarized by yet another of the artist’s iconic pieces: Instructions from 1989. Consisting of a DIY-like manual, Instructions enabled the reader to make one of Stingel’s ‘silver paintings’. The set of instructions challenged the very idea of the artist as the creator, questioning what painting could do and what its possibilities were at a t.mes when painting had been proclaimed dead and Minimalism, Conceptual Art and photography-based art were dominating the artistic scene. Stingel’s own ‘silver paintings’ are heavily layered canvases that are topped by a shimmering coat of silver paint, creating optical illusions when viewed from different angles. After producing these, the artist developed the series further, deciding to disregard the final metallic layer and reveal the underlying strata of brightly colored paint. Untitled, from 1997, is part of this new series, where the bright green sweeps of paint contrast starkly against the black background.

Throughout his career Rudolf Stingel has been able to successfully incorporate a highly conceptual aspect to his materials and process-based practice. His preoccupation with what painting is and what it can achieve has taken him to challenge every assumption or theory about the medium. Having started his career at a t.mes where painting’s end had been declared, Stingel followed his own direction, becoming part of a generation of artists who instead of abandoning the medium decided to explore it further. Like Sigmar Polke, Stingel has used every material imaginable in his works, from the most traditional to the most unorthodox. Like Gerhard Richter, he has distilled the very essence of painting, the sensuality of the medium and its theoretical aspects. With Untitled, as with the rest of his works Stingel “demonstrates an acute awareness of the aspirations, failures and challenges to Modernist painting, while at the same t.mes expressing a sincere belief in painting itself, focussing on formal characteristics including colour, gesture, composition, and, most importantly, surface” (Gary Carrion-Murayari, "Untitled," Rudolf Stingel, 2008, p. 112).